Sitting down playing pedal steel on tiny club stages. Always had the drummer behind me and a ride cymbal in one ear or the other. The tinnitus is louder than people speak, so I’m kinda cut off from normal activity. It sucks!
What’s pedal steel? is it both ears?
and BELIEVE ME, you have my utmost empathy.
it can be quite maddening.
I am so sorry. My tinnitus is not as bad as that. I have hearing loss worse in my right ear especially but I can still understand what people are saying to me under normal conditions. Being in a loud environment makes my tinnitus worse. Stress and not getting enough sleep makes it worse. If I forget to take my blood pressure meds it gets worse.
I guess that it serves me right, my step grandfather spent a lot of time in B-17 bombers during WWII and had severe hearing problems from that. He was a super nice guy. When I was a teenager my friends and I used to make light of his difficulty because he talked funny and often couldn’t understand what people were saying to him.