- May 24, 2025
Fifteen years ago, on the morning after his birthday, Ormond Beach resident Sal Gentile woke up with four noises blasting through his head, but they were ones only he could hear.
Gentile doesn't drink. He leads a generally healthy lifestyle, regularly going to the gym or cycling long distances. So, on that morning in 2010, he had no idea what he was experiencing.
After four days in bed, he went to go see a doctor and got his answer: Tinnitus.
"I said, 'Well, what is it?'" Gentile recalled. "He said, 'It's ringing in your ears.' So I said, 'Well, what do you do for it?' And he said, 'You live with it.'"
It was an answer Gentile, an Army National Guard veteran, refused to accept.
And because of that, he's spent the last 15 years helping people manage their symptoms as a support group leader with the American Tinnitus Association.
Gentile enlisted in the National Guard in 1970, and he believes that his experiences during his time in the military is what led to his tinnitus diagnosis.
Basic training was different back then compared to today, he said.
"There were a lot of loud explosions," Gentile said. "We didn't really use hearing protection, because honestly, they didn't want us to use it."
One day, he recalls practicing throwing grenades when one got real close to his group, and another guardsmen had to pick it up and toss it, causing all of them to duck from the explosion.
"It was an accident and so it was very close to me," Gentile said. "I mean, my ears just rang and rang and rang."
After six months of training, he went home to his fiancé, and now wife, Mattie. He would ask her, "do you hear those crickets?" And she wouldn't know what he was talking about.
The issue worsened over the years, to the point where sometimes when he was out cycling, he was unable to hear directions shouted by his friends.
After receiving his diagnosis, Gentile said he saw multiple different audiologists before he started doing his own research and came across the ATA, which is a nonprofit organization. Then, he came across Dr. Christopher Spankovich, who was the University of Florida at the time. They spent four hours speaking, and ultimately, Spankovich recommended hearing aids to create white noise to mask Gentile's tinnitus.
That gave Gentile his life back, he said.
"The hearing aids allowed me to hear the chirping birds," Gentile said. "They allowed me to hear road noise, things I couldn't hear before, which actually mask the tinnitus. So that was very helpful."
Gentile started volunteering with different organizations in Tampa, where he lived at the time. That's when an ATA staff member suggested he become a peer-to-peer support group leader.
Since then, Gentile has helped people ages 10-84, veterans and non-veterans. He's hoping to start a group in the Ormond Beach area, but he's looking for a space to conduct meetings.
But, he said, the issue about raising awareness is that tinnitus is subjective. Different people have different kinds of tinnitus, which can be triggered by a variety of incidents or sounds. He's helped people who have the national anthem playing over and over in their head, or others where it sounds like Morse code in their ears.
"There are over 700 million people that have some sort of tinnitus, and some of them are disabled veterans, and what we hear, or what these people hear, are phantom noises, and nobody listens," Gentile said. "That's the problem. If I can make someone happier and make the quality of their life just a little bit better, then I did something to conquer this disability in the world."
In 2012, Gentile was recognized by the city of Tampa for his efforts in raising awareness for tinnitus. In 2013, he also organized a long distance bicycle ride fundraiser for the ATA, raising over $20,000.
Veterans also face an additional hurdle: getting recognized as disabled by Veterans Affairs for tinnitus. Gentile was finally recognized as a disabled vet three months ago, but for anxiety, not tinnitus.
"How do you prove, going back to 1970 that the VA, the army was responsible, or the National Guard at that time, was responsible for tinnitus?" Gentile said. "So a lot of these veterans that have it and that I work with are struggling."
Email Gentile at [email protected].
