The doctor confirmed that I had hearing loss and then told me I didn’t have hearing loss, he did not offer therapy, told me I have to accept the fact that tinnitus might be permanent (nah! State the obvious! What do you think I’ve been trying to do for 8 months?!), undermine everything I was saying, and told me he would tell me the cause, but he never did tell me the cause of my tinnitus. His attitude was ‘get over it, k have tinnitus too’.
To cut a long story short, when I finally had my ENT appointment on 23rd November, the hearing test showed a loss of hearing between 6000 Hz - 8000 Hz. The female who conducted this test told me that it is unusual for such hearing loss to occur in a 20 year old. She told me to wait to be seen by the ear doctor, and that he would provide further details.
The doctor was over half an hour late and contradicted what the nurse said. The first thing he said was ‘I don’t want you going out of here saying that you have hearing loss’, despite the fact that hearing loss showed up on the graph and the nurse herself told me that I did. I also never mentioned the fact that I did, I merely asked him to confirm what the nurse had said! He told me I don’t have hearing loss, and then said ‘It’s mild’, then he said I didn’t have hearing loss again. He told me ‘You need to accept the fact that the tinnitus might be permanent’. What does he think I’ve been trying to do for the past 8 months? He said ‘I’m getting onto the part where I tell you about the cause of your tinnitus’ and then he never did tell me the cause. He said ‘You’re not getting cochlear implants. They are only for people who have sever hearing loss.’ Despite the fact that when I tap on the part of my skull (reddit tinnitus ‘cure’), where cochlear implants go, my tinnitus reduces dramatically, albeit temporarily. The cochlear implants would offer me permanent relief. The doctor was indifferent (whilst putting on an I-know-it-all-so-I-am-better-than-you demeanour), patronising, disingenuous, undermined everything I said and humiliated me in front of a female trainee nurse who sat there in silence whilst fetching patients for him because he couldn’t be bothered to leave his seat.
The doctor made me feel like it was my fault that I had tinnitus.