It's been a long and winding road!
Probably first noticed the T about 2.5 years ago, after a particularly loud gig. Bearing in mind my gigs are generally solo affairs in OAP care homes. This was a SEND day centre with more of a 'party' vibe. I pushed it. Afterwards ears were ringing quite a bit and that ring didn't want to go away. I felt something had changed!
After this was a year of panic and stress trying all I could to reduce sound volumes. I tried every earplug variety, speaker arrangement, backing track style. Nothing changed the fact that unless I completely plugged my ears with full foam heavy duty, deep earplugs - the ringing would persist. Hearing tests, audiologists, and ENTs clouded the picture more insisting I had no hearing loss.
The foam plugs caused issues like infections, and other pains. I went to custom moulds. However, these cause a resonant 'occlusion effect' of a booming voice. Also, my enjoyment of gigs and audience connection was all but lost. Miserable. Stress added to this, as I feared my income would dry up.
In the last few months I've felt I've turned a corner. I realised that my ears would ring even in relatively quiet situations, going for a walk and coming home to a quiet room - ears would be ringing loudly. Strange? I thought perhaps I was artificially reducing the volume of my world and creating 'dips' in the T. Then when in normal situations, like my walk, the T would return to a moderate base level.
I needed a new approach.
I decided that my gigs were probably for the most part, not loud enough to be damaging my hearing. I would take a chance and try not using the earplugs again unless I genuinely 'felt' the noisy pain in my ears of something too loud. This approach seems to be working fairly well.
I generally start my gigs with an acoustic guitar now, gently finger strumming and singing without a mic. The OAPs love this! I will then merge into my backing tracks and even do the first few songs without the plugs, it's very enjoyable like this and sometimes the whole gig stays at that level. Nice.
However usually, a point comes where it does start to get a bit loud and I'll plug my ears.
The results?
Overall, good. My T seems at a fairly stable (although slightly higher) level. I feel I may be able to adapt and habituate to this over time. I'm still figuring out exactly what level is too much, to allow my ears to recover, and sometimes make a mistake a push it - then I get pings afterwards. But generally, I'm a lot more hopeful and optimistic now, and I feel I'm actually enjoying my work again.
Just wanted to share something positive with you guys!
Loop earplugs
