Tinnitus, tintinnabulation & other bells and whistles

Let’s talk about tinnitus (and for the record, it’s tin-ih-tus, not tin-I-tus, according to my brother the audiology professor).

The term is sometimes used interchangeably with “ringing in the ears,” but as you may know only too well, tinnitus can take many forms — beep, squeak, buzz, shriek. It can also be impressively complex. After my first cochlear implant surgery, while I was waiting for my “activation” and hearing almost nothing, my tinnitus went into overdrive. Perhaps because I had spent so much of my life immersed in music – dancing to it, cooking to it, driving to it, making love to it – my tinnitus often had a terpsichorean tinge. My inner ears and brain generated musical sounds entirely on their own. Spontaneously. Unstoppably.

For a while, I heard a tune that reminded me of “Telstar,” a 1962 instrumental hit by the Tornados that had an eerie “space-age” sound.

After that, I went through a phase during which I heard an unfamiliar progression of bass notes – over and over and over. Then there was a period when in every quiet minute I heard something that sounded kind of like Nancy Wilson’s booming, power-chord intro to Heart’s “Crazy on You.” Yet another while, in a rare classical interlude, I heard some akin to “March of the Wooden Soldiers” from “The Nutcracker.”

I did some research and learned that I was experiencing “musical hallucinations,” a fairly common variation of tinnitus. The Mayo Clinic website mentions these “phantom sounds” along with a half a dozen other common tinnitus manifestations: ringing, buzzing, roaring, clicking, whistling, hissing.

Each of these is an old friend now. I barely even notice when they recur – except when they reach the epic proportions of one of Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” recordings of the Ronettes or the Righteous Brothers.

What about you? Do you hear what I hear, or something different?