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Melanie West, 63, has had a ringing in her ears as long as she can remember. When she was a kid in the '50s and '60s, it was a high-pitched sound in both ears that her doctors did not believe existed. "I would go from doctor to doctor explaining, 'I hear this sound inside of my head, and it won't let me sleep.' I was having a hard time concentrating, and they would tell me that I don't have it," she says. When West was stressed, or hadn't had enough sleep, it would get worse and her grades would plummet. Once, the noise made her so tense that she broke a hairbrush she was holding.
The trouble with tinnitus-the medical term for ear-ringing-is there's really no good way to measure a sound that only the patient can hear. Interest in and recognition of the condition has improved in the past couple decades, partly thanks to advances in brain science. But when West, now the CEO and chair of the board of directors of the American Tinnitus Association (ATA), was young, it was less understood.
Over time, she adapted. She read a lot of psychology books and says those helped. She started to manage a pretty good quality of life, until she got in a car accident in 2008. Another vehicle rear-ended hers at about 55 miles per hour, and something about this event changed the sound considerably.
It got louder-about twice as loud, she says-and fuller, and made more of a "shh" sound. The noise is now louder in her right ear than her left, "so they're not the same, and even that becomes a little irritating," she says. After the accident, "I couldn't sleep, I didn't want to eat. It just affects every single part of your life."
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