Miranda Luby was only 36 years old when her tinnitus arrived in the middle of the night, without warning and for no clear reason. Two years ago, she began to hear a high-pitched, electronic hum while lying in bed. She roamed the house in her pyjamas, pressing her ears against electrical appliances, before realising after half an hour that the sound was coming from inside her own head.
She had heard ringing in her ears before, rising and falling like a one-note crescendo. As a child, she believed the myth that it was the sound of dying ear cells. This time, it did not stop.
A common condition with a severe form
Tinnitus is common, with a global burden similar to migraines. Fourteen per cent of adults experience tinnitus, with 2% experiencing a severe form. It is often triggered by age-related or noise-induced hearing loss, but Luby was only 36 and an audiologist revealed her hearing was perfect. Another trigger is stress.
The first few days felt increasingly claustrophobic. The alarm-like sound followed her everywhere: to her writing desk, to coffee with a friend, into the shower and back into bed. For someone who worships the first birdcall of dawn and owns two copies of Sara Maitland's A Book of Silence, it felt especially cruel.
A search for answers
Her GP thought she might have an ear infection. Luby cried with relief, saying she had never been so happy to have an infection. The drops she was given blocked both ears and made the ringing significantly louder. Meditation was useless. She drove to the ocean and sat for hours, where the roar of whitewater drowned out the sound, and took the sea back to bed with her as a 10-hour playlist.
The drops dried up and the infection, if there was one, was gone. Weeks passed, but the ringing remained. She fell down a research rabbit hole, finding advice to try supplements, acupuncture, hypnosis or antidepressants, but the most common advice was to try to ignore it.
Learning to live with it
The most disconcerting thing about tinnitus, Luby writes, is that the sound does not exist outside your perception of it. It is a type of false alarm created by the nervous system, and the less attention you pay to it, the less you hear it. This did not feel helpful when a semi-trailer's brakes had been squealing in her ears for two months.
It took seven excruciating weeks to get into an ENT. After performing test after test, he told her there was nothing wrong with her. "Stop fighting this," his voice seemed to say. "You're already free." Over the following months, her tinnitus began to soften around the edges. Through natural habituation and intentionally training her attention, her nervous system learned to focus on more important things. Sometimes, while watching the sun rise or reading a book, she did not hear it at all.
These days, tinnitus is still her near-constant companion, but she has stopped wishing things were different. When stress causes the ringing to spike, she refocuses her attention on something she loves, and the sound soon stops bothering her. Her new version of tranquility returns.
