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.”

Talking with doctors, once again, was frustrating. She describes visiting otolaryngologists—ear, nose, and throat doctors—and “literally, I sat in the parking lot, crying, because they would simply look at you and say ‘There's nothing we can do for you,’” she says. “‘Go home and learn to live with it’—I have heard that so many times in my life.”

* * *

Tinnitus is often described as ringing in the ears, but that’s not the only sound that qualifies. It can also present as buzzing, roaring, clicking, hissing, or a noise like crickets, among other things. A type known as pulsatile tinnitus is rhythmic, often keeping time with the person’s heartbeat.

Most people will probably experience temporary tinnitus at some point in their lives after exposure to loud noises—after a concert, say. But it will likely go away. Estimating how many people have tinnitus, and the severity of each case, is difficult, because different studies have defined it in different ways. According to one measure, 50 million Americans—or 25 percent of the population—experienced any tinnitus in the past year, while 16 million, or 8 percent, experienced it “frequently.” The ATA reports that 20 million people have “burdensome” tinnitus and 2 million have “extreme and debilitating” cases. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) asks people if they’ve had tinnitus that lasted for more than five minutes in the past year—10 percent (25 million) have. “We’re interested in something that pushes the threshold so that they noticed it for a while,” says Howard Hoffman, the director of epidemiology and statistics at the NIDCD.

Suffice it to say it’s a common experience—and, for a significant number of people, an exhausting one.

Tinnitus is not a disease in and of itself, but it can be a symptom of other underlying problems. It can also be a symptom of nothing in particular. Pulsatile tinnitus, which accounts for less than 10 percent of tinnitus cases, is unique in that it can typically be heard by the doctor as well as the patient, and it tends to be a sign of something wrong with the vascular system. With idiopathic tinnitus—the kind only the sufferer can hear—the story is more complex. It is often associated with hearing loss, but not always, and the chances of getting it increase with age. It can indicate a tumor (in which case the tinnitus will usually be one-sided) or appear as part of Ménière’s disease, otosclerosis (a disorder that causes progressive deafness), or disorders of the temperomandibular joint that connects the jaw to the skull. Exposure to loud noises, especially over long periods of time, puts a person at risk, so construction workers and musicians have higher rates of tinnitus than the general population. Tinnitus is also the number-one disability among veterans.