RockyMtnHigh
New Here
Hi Everyone! I am very glad that I found this forum.
I had a severe skull fracture and a hairline fracture on my axial vertebrae (the top or first one) when I was 18. The impact also blew up my inner ear or cochlea and I have been completely deaf in my right ear ever since. The worst part of my deafness is the constant "roaring" tinnitus -- a very loud ringing with a slight underwater tone. A continuous stressor that I have no control over.
Now is the weird part. My long term memory got better. And significantly. So in a way I actually got a little smarter because I could retain and recall so much information. And it took a long time before any doctor could figure it out. Eventually a psychiatric resident told me he had seen research on amnesia where instead of blocking out memories, sometimes an activated limbic system, in flight/fright mode, can result in a hyperactive memory condition. It kind of makes sense if you think about being in a perceived dangerous situation.
My activated limbic system is due to the nature of my hearing loss. The auditory nerve is still intact. The auditory nerves from each ear meet in the center of the brain (corpus collosm?) and do a spatial mapping of the sounds you hear. So this area of the brain is what makes you jump when you hear a noise behind you even before you have determined what the sound is. Then the full boat from both ears go to each auditory cortex and then if its language goes way up to the language decoder in our brains. So, unlike eye sight, our hearing is intimately linked to our limbic system. And if the hearing system gets broken in certain ways, the limbic system is almost always in hyperactive mode as it can't tell where potential threats are coming from.
Eventually the stress to my limbic system, combined with incorrectly prescribed brain drugs, led to a generalized seizure. Along the way was 14 years of telling doctors mycondition was from my TBI and them telling me that was too long ago. I developed a fear and extreme anxiety with doctors because I realized the guinea pig was getting hurt by their lack of knowledge or the refusal to really investgate.
I feel like there isn't anyone else like me and that people don't really get it. I feel immense sadness most of the time now, and the loneliness that comes with the isolation.
Thanks for reading my intro and sorry it was so long. Its tough to explain these things.
I had a severe skull fracture and a hairline fracture on my axial vertebrae (the top or first one) when I was 18. The impact also blew up my inner ear or cochlea and I have been completely deaf in my right ear ever since. The worst part of my deafness is the constant "roaring" tinnitus -- a very loud ringing with a slight underwater tone. A continuous stressor that I have no control over.
Now is the weird part. My long term memory got better. And significantly. So in a way I actually got a little smarter because I could retain and recall so much information. And it took a long time before any doctor could figure it out. Eventually a psychiatric resident told me he had seen research on amnesia where instead of blocking out memories, sometimes an activated limbic system, in flight/fright mode, can result in a hyperactive memory condition. It kind of makes sense if you think about being in a perceived dangerous situation.
My activated limbic system is due to the nature of my hearing loss. The auditory nerve is still intact. The auditory nerves from each ear meet in the center of the brain (corpus collosm?) and do a spatial mapping of the sounds you hear. So this area of the brain is what makes you jump when you hear a noise behind you even before you have determined what the sound is. Then the full boat from both ears go to each auditory cortex and then if its language goes way up to the language decoder in our brains. So, unlike eye sight, our hearing is intimately linked to our limbic system. And if the hearing system gets broken in certain ways, the limbic system is almost always in hyperactive mode as it can't tell where potential threats are coming from.
Eventually the stress to my limbic system, combined with incorrectly prescribed brain drugs, led to a generalized seizure. Along the way was 14 years of telling doctors mycondition was from my TBI and them telling me that was too long ago. I developed a fear and extreme anxiety with doctors because I realized the guinea pig was getting hurt by their lack of knowledge or the refusal to really investgate.
I feel like there isn't anyone else like me and that people don't really get it. I feel immense sadness most of the time now, and the loneliness that comes with the isolation.
Thanks for reading my intro and sorry it was so long. Its tough to explain these things.
