I feel ya, bro. Both the tinnitus and hearing loss suck big-time. Take heart. Did you have an audiology test to baseline how much your hearing is impaired That was important for me. Tinnitus is a weird thing, in that it feels very real as it hums and buzzes in your ear, but there is nothing physical that doctors can do about it. You can buy miracle oil that claims to cure it; I doubt it. It will bother you most when you are tiredest, when you let up on concentrating on what you’re trying to hear, which of course you must inevitably do to function. It's sort of a default "noise". It's very much with me as I write this. Like an annoying friend who keeps trying to get my attention, I pay attention to other things—things that actually do exist in the physical world. The tinnitus bothers me the most in the evening, when I'm tired from concentrating, trying to hear what people are saying. It's the big white noise, like what a speaker sounds like when no source is hooked up to it.

I’ve discovered that neither tinnitus nor hearing loss are felt the same way for everyone. I lost 97% of the hearing in my right ear in 2017, while my wife and I were heading to an arts festival to sing. By some miracle, I was (and am) able to hear well enough to perform, although when it comes to conversation, especially in a restaurant or bar, I am utterly lost. I'm basically hearing in mono--I can't tell if a sound is coming from behind me or in front. In my case, this all came about--I was told by my ENT—because of a virus in the inner ear that destroyed auditory nerves. Why, who knows? Your situation is probably quite different. I’m sorry you’re having to deal with it, but give it time and be patient.

In my case, the hearing aids I use don't exactly work miracles, but they do help. The downside of them is that they take concentration, too. A friend of mine swears by his; they make more of a difference for him than me. Them's the breaks...

Hearing is, in large part, a mental activity, sorting out the sounds in your environment and making sense of them. Here’s a website with ear training exercises (www.lacelistening.com) that you might find helpful.

Best of luck!