Pluggers by Rick McKee for April 20, 2024

Called the tinnitus help line, and it just kept ringing!!!

Mine’s much too high to soound like bacon sizzling. Besides, my nose knows better!

Mine sounds more like the bugs on a summer night.

Mine sounds like muffled machinery in a Foundry.

Still hibearnating eh.

Mine sounds like water running through pipes when a faucet’s open in another room.

Mine sounds like high power lines buzzing.

Mine’s a constant 18 kilocycle note. Started by listening to 10,000 rounds being fired from the 5" guns on our Destroyer in ’Nam.

Mine sometimes sounds like a harmonica note. Never had annoying tinnitus until I had Covid a few years back. Had it ever since.

Something else additionally wrong if one’s tinnitus sounds like sizzling bacon. Mine is the same frequency as the last one on a hearing test.

Either that, or it’s the alarm clock.

That, and foot stuff, scares me almost as much as dementia. So far so good, knock wood.

I’ve had ringing so loud it woke me from a sound sleep! I’ve been tempted to put my ear next to my wife’s to see if she can hear it!

My tinnitus sounds like a pond full of spring peepers. My grandfather said that his sounded like his head was in a barrel along with an old-fashioned radio playing the static in between channels. I prefer mine,

What is really amazing is dreaming in color with sound, aroma’s, and tastes….

I’ve had tinnitus for 30 years. It is common but a serious malady. I use a free app on the internet called myNoise to generate the sound that masks my tinnitus when I sleep. You can set it for any frequency.

Most sound engineers, particularly those who mixed sound for metal bands, have a form of tinnitus. Mine’s from hours upon hours of editing tape for either radio or theater with headphones on at 80-90 dB.

I had no idea there were so many of us with a constant symphony. That makes me feel a little better. I tried all of the “remedies”, none worked. I’ve had it so many years now that my mind just tunes it out.

If you’re half-awake and hear bacon sizzling, but realize it’s the sound you programmed into your phone’s alarm clock, you’re a real Plugger.

Mine is from IBM 1403 line printer trains and sonar.

My tinnitus sounds like feedback from a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo. Got it from an ACDC concert, and my time as crew chief on a dragster. I can’t put the slash in ACDC, the censors think it’s a URL.

It’s worse when it triggers that part of your brain that smells bacon. After a few minutes of that, you have to get up to see if there just might be a leftover piece of bacon in the refrigerator (for the first time in history).

Shortly after that, your wife wakes up to the sound of clattering pans and bacon frying in the kitchen.