Choreographing a dance for her Country Women's Association branch was something Leone Traeger would not have attempted before her tinnitus treatment.
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Since using the Tinnibot app on her phone, now MindEar, to help manage the condition, she is living a full life. People in Australia are being encouraged to download MindEar while it is still being worked on.
According to Better Health, tinnitus is experienced as noises or ringing in your ears or head when no physical noise is present. It's a symptom of a problem in your auditory system and has no 'cure', but some behavioural changes can make a difference.
MindEar uses a combination of cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness and relaxation exercises as well as sound therapy to help you train your brain's reaction so that humans can tune out tinnitus. The sound people perceive fades in the background and becomes less bothersome.
The app's development was led by the University of Auckland.
Leone, aged 64, of Jamberoo, NSW, has been living with tinnitus for years.
Her symptoms started with a ticking in her ear. "I thought 'that's strange, that's unusual', and then it went away. Then it came back," she said.
"One morning I woke up and I had this big screaming in my ear and I thought 'I don't think that's right' and then it stopped. Then it screamed and stopped, it screamed and stopped, and this went on and on."
She went to doctors; ears, nose and throat specialists; and audiologists, and after they found nothing 'wrong' with her - perfect hearing, 99.9 per cent speech recognition, even tests for a tumour - they said the description of her experience was that it is tinnitus.
"The doctors send you on these journeys, and nothing... (you're told) 'you've got this condition' and you're alone."
Tinnitus isolated Leone; she stopped exercising and meeting with friends, could not babysit her seven grandchildren, and struggled to do her job at a college. She spent a lot of time in her bedroom.
"It makes you feel like you're on a spiral of anxiety. I didn't want to go on, it was that bad. You just can't see a way out when you've visited all the medical people, you've done everything you can. I just can't stand the screaming in my ear, and then the stopping, and then the screaming, and stopping. Then you wake up."
Feeling desperate, she saw a fourth audiologist, who presented her with a brochure for Tinnibot - a predecessor to MindEar. Leone's luck changed.
"They said 'I've just got this pamphlet just across my desk when I walked in my office five minutes ago and it's an app for tinnitus' and he said 'why don't you try this?' He said 'I can't really tell you a lot about it because he said I've just seen it here now'."
The experience taught her about cognitive behavioural therapy, which is about conscientious efforts to change thinking patterns. She learned sound therapy and how to meditate, watched webinars, used the virtual chat bot, and even phoned a coach - a real person - about how to manage the condition.
Whenever overwhelming feelings emerged, she'd use the app to listen to relaxing sounds, for example crickets, plus listen to a podcast, think positively again, and move forward.
The cognitive behavioural therapy and in particular, challenging her negative thoughts, helped her greatly.
Sometimes she gets unhelpful thoughts come through subconsciously, for example "this is really loud, this is noisy, you're never going to get out of this". When this happens, Leone consciously stops, thinks "wait a minute, I am going to take charge of this tinnitus; it is not going to be as loud, I am going to do something for example go for a walk, think positively and walk through it, and I'm going to do it". And she can do it.
"Even the worrying, it's all about training your brain not to catastrophise the event, for example 'I can't worry about that tonight, I'll worry about it tomorrow morning'. You move forward like that."
Since using the app, she'd found the bouts of intense screaming have gotten less.
"If you had asked me what it's like (before using the app), I'd have said it's 20/10, It's so bad," she said.
"Now I would say on my best days a 1/10 and a worse day a 2/10, but it's been 15 months to get to that point, and doing what I'm meant to be doing.
"I couldn't have done it without the app... I remember standing in my bedroom going 'I'm alone, I don't know what to do, I don't know how to get through'. But I have managed."
Today Leone does pilates, exercises, and recently choreographed a dance for a Country Women's Association branch performance - something she wouldn't have attempted previously.
"I've put myself out there and pushed through."
After this interview had concluded Leone was preparing to go to the cinema to watch Mean Girls with her granddaughters - an activity she hadn't done in years because of tinnitus.
"(This is where) my cognitive behaviour therapy comes in. My brain is saying 'I don't think I can do it'... but I'm saying 'I'm not going to be around forever. Those grandchildren will be there to see the film, I'm going to have a go. And if I can't do it, I'll have another go."
A research team's report about the matter can be found in Frontiers in Audiology and Otology.
Download the MindEar app for Google or Apple here.
