Tampa veteran offers sounding board for others with tinnitus
Nearly 15 years ago, Army National Guard veteran Sal Gentile woke up the morning after his 58th birthday and wondered if he had brain damage.
From his bed in a Tampa neighborhood, he could hear the loud hiss of steam pipes, the rattle of a rattlesnake, a mechanical noise, and something akin to waves crashing against a wall. He had been gradually losing his hearing before this, but, embarrassed of being perceived as deaf, he ignored it. He pretended he could hear people talking even when he couldn’t. This condition was much harder to hide.
“I’m a very social person. I didn’t get out of bed for, I’d say, four days. I kept the covers over my head. I didn’t know what was wrong with me,” Gentile said. “I was screaming.”
His wife, Mattie, convinced him to visit a general practitioner, who diagnosed him with tinnitus. Tinnitus occurs when someone hears ringing, buzzing or other noises like clicking inside one or both of their ears that aren’t being produced by people or objects around them, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
Tinnitus affects about one out of 10 Americans and can be caused by roughly 200
health disorders, the American Tinnitus Association states. Sal isn’t sure if his tinnitus is a result of his service, genetics, loud concerts or a combination of the three.
It is the most common service-connected disability among veterans, according to the
Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.
“We see a lot,” said Ashley Perkins, an audiologist and tinnitus expert who works within the Orlando Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. “Our veterans are at a higher chance of being around loud noise, which is something that can cause it. Traumatic brain injury is another condition that’s linked to tinnitus.”
In a random sample of veterans diagnosed with tinnitus at the VA, nearly 50% said the condition severely or very severely impacted their ability to complete daily life activities, according to 2021 research published in Military Medicine. About 2.3 million veterans were receiving disability payments for their tinnitus in 2020, which means the condition was found to be connected to their service.
The Hearing Health Foundation emphasizes the importance of service people consistently wearing protection such as earmuffs and earplugs to prevent tinnitus and noise-induced hearing loss. Though there is no cure, Perkins said many treatments are available that can make it manageable: retraining therapy, hearing aids, sound masking devices and medication, for instance.
Yet when Gentile got his diagnosis, his doctor told him to just live with it as is.
“I go, what do you mean live with it? How do I live with this? I can’t function,” Gentile said. “And he said, ‘well, you’re gonna have to just suck it up.’ ”
Gentile sought out more doctors, a
psychiatrist, an acupuncturist, a hypnotist, anyone who could offer potential relief, but everyone echoed the first doctor: live with it.
“I call it the invisible illness,” Gentile said. “We are forgotten.”
Then, Gentile discovered the American Tinnitus Association, a nonprofit that funds tinnitus research, spreads awareness and offers support to those affected. They have a list of tinnitus healthcare providers at ata.org/ providerlist.
Through this organization, he found an audiologist from the University of Florida who taught him techniques to cope with his tinnitus and diagnosed him with high-frequency hearing loss as well.
He was in cognitive behavioral therapy for seven years. He trained his brain not to pay as much attention to the noises by listening to a pleasant sound — running water — on headphones, almost constantly. He uses a sound machine to help him sleep, and hearing aids so he can better hear sounds that will help mask his tinnitus. Though nothing can make the noises go away, his brain is retrained.
“This means nothing to me anymore,” he said. “There are so many things out there in the world, and so many illnesses, and people who are suffering from so many different disorders that ... I would never trade it.”
Tinnitus research is underfunded compared to similarly prevalent health conditions; its origins and manifestations vary widely; and it’s hard to objectively evaluate whether a treatment is working. These are perhaps some of the reasons there is no cure, suggests a 2019 review in Frontiers in Neuroscience led by Don McFerran, a Colchester, England doctor and member of the British Tinnitus Association.
But no cure doesn’t mean there’s no hope, Gentile said.
“Make friends with it,” he said. “I get up in the morning, I say good morning to it, I take a shower with it. I look in the mirror and say ... ‘Keep working out, keep that bike riding going, make sure you have a great day, and be kind to your wife and other people today.’ ”
The now-72-year-old has retired to Latitude Margaritaville in Daytona Beach, where he spreads awareness and provides resources to others with the condition, so they have an easier time than he did.
“We teach people it’s not necessarily the noise that’s bothering them, but it’s their reaction to the noise,” he said. “The minute you let this get to you in any way possible, you lose your quality of life . ... The more you think about it, the louder it gets.”
He volunteers with the
American Tinnitus Association and runs a support group in Latitude Margaritaville on the fourth Tuesday of every month at 4 p.m. It’s for anyone, not just veterans. He works with audiologists to share resources and to
teach people with tinnitus not to be embarrassed. He has plans to shadow an audiologist and start running classes to educate general practitioners.
Isolation during the pandemic has made it even harder for people to cope with the condition, he’s noticed. His email is open to anyone who wants to get in touch: tvtinnitus@gmail. com.
While Gentile doesn’t go to the VA, there are resources available for the many veterans who do. Perkins encourages patients in the Orlando VA system to schedule an audiology appointment. She said the system offers audiologists at Lake Nona, Lake Baldwin, Viera, Tavares, Daytona, and Deltona locations. She said that it has seven small group classes per month who meet virtually, and that number will expand to nine next year.
“I just wish people knew that there are things that we can do and provide for them that they can do to better manage their tinnitus. I feel really strongly that they don’t have to learn to live with it,” she said.