I AM MIKE...

...and I am pleased to share a bit of how my tinnitus history has evolved since I first got tinnitus.  I'd be glad to hear from you, respond, and publish YOUR letters in this column, if you give email permission.

So you understand my background, my first article, "We Need Each Other," was originally published in Tinnitus Today/June 1996; Volume 21, Number 2. At the time I had had tinnitus less than a year.

"We Need Each Other"

by Michael Cohen

Tinnitus, like any other dramatic life event, can force a mission upon us; we must care not only for ourselves but for others to feel better.

Recently, I became more involved with the ATA as a telephone and letter contact person. The first response I received was from a woman in Tennessee who sounded desperate. She wrote: "I have been to numerous doctors who say there's nothing they can do about tinnitus.  It has destroyed my life. If there is anything you can tell me about this horrid disease, I sure would appreciate it."

What to do?  Surely, she knows about the resources of the ATA; after all, that's how she found me.  What more can I, a layman, offer a fellow sufferer?  I call directory assistance in Tennessee, but there is no listing. Now I have no choice; for the first time since my adolescence, when I composed unrequited "puppy love" letters, I am compelled to sit down and write another letter -- this time for someone in more need than myself:

January 4, 1996

Ms. W.
Finley, TN

Dear Ms. W.:

        I am glad  you found my name as a telephone and letter contact in Tinnitus Today.  Believe me, your letter of 12-28-95 was very touching.
       What you have written about is pain -- pain that is not talked, empathized, kissed and loved, medicated, meditated, or even prayed away. It's a real you-know-what and it doesn't stop.
        I know this because I have had constant tinnitus since this past summer, and even though I had a $10,000 operation to repair a tear in my cochlea, this did not help my tinnitus nor restore much hearing in my right ear.  Fortunately, my left ear is not affected.  Heartbroken after the failure of the operation, I went to a tinnitus "expert."  This doctor was upbeat about his favorite histamine and allergy treatments.  Unfortunately, hope for a couple of months was all I got because neither treatment worked. The only thing that has had any real palliative effect is one .25 mg tablet of Xanax which I take every night about an hour before bedtime.

With the help of the pill and a masking device called "Heart and Sound Soother and Timer" set at a low white noise level and placed next to my pillow, I usually get a fair night's sleep.  And usually I can get up for work without feeling too enervated: i.e., I can go through a busy day not overcome by self-pity.

        So I survive.  But I would be less than honest if I didn't tell you that there are times when I feel like crying.  And there are guilty moments when I wish I could change the time last July when I blew my nose too hard and screamed at the dog and then, within one hour, felt dizzy, couldn't hear, and the hissing sound WHICH NEVER STOPS started.

        In your letter, you write, "If there is anything you can tell me about this horrid disease, I sure would appreciate it...I'm having a very hard time coping." I can tell you, Ms. W., that we are all having a hard time coping - whether it's William Shatner, a fellow-sufferer who is giving his name value to television spots and going to Washington, D.C., to lobby for more research money, or Michael Cohen, a teacher bumped out of a full-time position and now trying to hold onto a substitute teaching job in a chaotic, gang-ridden inner city high school in Chicago while trying to find enough energy to single-parent a 14-year-old son full-time.

        Ms. W., there is no simple response to you when you say, "It has destroyed my life.  I've been to numerous doctors who say there's nothing they can do about it!  How discouraging to hear this."  I can only say that I believe there will be a cure some day, prayerfully in our lifetime.  But I don't believe that a cure is possible unless more of the estimated 10 million tinnitus sufferers make some public noise instead of just "living with it" in isolation.

        What I am trying to say is that each of us, to the best of our ability, has to make a choice.  We must decide whether or not tinnitus education and research should be sustained with as much intensity and consistently as the sound of tinnitus itself. I think the answer should be "yes" and that in unity, our sufferings will have some meaning.

        Again, thanks for your letter, Ms. W., and for listening to my "tinnitus noise."  I hope you will write back and perhaps give me a telephone number where you can be reached.

        All of us  - we need each other!

        Sincerely,
        Michael Cohen

Should readers wish to know more about Dr. Shemesh's program for foreign visitors (conducted by him at Hadassah Medical Center, Jerusalem, and recently approved by Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and others) they can contact him directly. The phone and hours are specified on his website:            www.hadassah.org.il/hmo/tinnitus/tinnitus.htm

Shalom, Mike Cohen
e-mail: nu@netvision.net.il
phone: 011-972-50-605-398  / Jerusalem

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