Acoustic Shock/Trauma and Nerve Irritation from Girlfriend Jamming Her Fork Into a Plate?

Hello.

I think I got acoustic shock/trauma after my girlfriend jammed her fork into a plate when eating generating a high pitched sound around 95 dB.

I pulled my head back and it hurt my left ear bad.

Then I started to feel fullness in ears and sounds got louder and my ears feels weird. I don't know if it's pain really, just a weird feeling.

I also get like vibrations in my eardrums with certain sounds, like when my newborn is crying loud and I have hearing protection in, it feels like my eardrums vibrate and I feel like shocks in my face, teeth and scalp. Probably irritating a nerve?

I also started to have headaches, neck pain and grinding my teeth at night after this.

It's been like 2 months now.

I can go out in public without hearing protection but I am still afraid of loud sounds.

Thoughts? Will it go away?

 

Please read this paper to get an understanding of what may be happening. I have also had many of the same symptoms, without actual acoustic shock, so I sympathize with your issue.

An Integrative Model Accounting for the Symptom Cluster Triggered After an Acoustic Shock

 

Did these symptoms pass in your case?

 

Not yet. My most notable symptom is pressure in head and ears.

A low histamine diet may help you.

 

Damn, you have trigeminal nerve problem as well?

 

Yup.

 

That used to happen to me when I had severe hyperacusis. Progressively it got away, over years, after severe hyperacusis morphed into a bit of hearing loss, tinnitus and less bad hyperacusis.

 

I used my phone to measure the sound, it may be a little more.

Yes, I have always been a little sensitive to noise.

I am not vaccinated.

The weird thing is when my newborn is screaming and I wear earplugs I can feel my trigeminal nerve (?) getting irritated and the sound feels like vibrations in the nerve. Does that makes any sense?

 

Hello again!

A little update, now my fullness has gone away and is now a tickly feeling in my left ear.

I still have bad headaches and stiff neck.

I also sometimes have weird feelings in hands and feet?

I don't know if I have hyperacusis anymore. I feel the trigeminal issues are the main problem now for me as I only get tired from sound but not "pain" in the ear anymore.

 

How is your noxacusis now Juan?

 

Good to hear. Avoid that noise as much as you can. It has made my noxacusis horrible and much worse every time I’m exposed to it.

 

I wonder how much I must protect... I have a newborn that screams around 80-85 dB (measured by my phone). That sound makes my ear feel like it "vibrates" but it is not painful.

 

Maybe consider to use some kind of hearing protection, like custom molded earplugs with interchangeable filters, then you can just reduce the volume a little bit to make it more comfortable. They still enable you to hear well.

Just my 2 cents,
Stacken

 

Yeah I have the Alpine MusicSafe Pro with 11 dB filters i use now.

And also: Tjenare från en annan svensk

 

My hearing is getting worse. Basically it is harder to understand everything, and particularly TV and speech in noise. Reactivity to sound is a bit better, but hyperacusis still kicks in for very loud sounds. Tinnitus is quite unpredictable... mine fluctuates.

 

So your noxacusis was severe, right, like 10/10 bad? And now you only get stabbing pain from loud noise? Trying to talk to as many people as I can, my noxacusis keeps getting worse and I’m also trying to manage a damn fistula.

 

Don’t expose yourself to your kid screaming, that is a very bad idea. Put earmuffs on or you will end up like me. Better to be safe than sorry.

 

@Greg Sacramento, you had Acoustic shock disorder, right? Any tips?

 

Right. My hyperacusis was really really bad, a loud sound felt like a knife that would go through earplugs and earmuffs.

 

You can go out now and do stuff with earplugs in? But your tinnitus and hearing loss got worse?

 

Yeah, I can do that now. At the beginning I would get setbacks for one off noises even wearing double protection. These setbacks over time triggered hearing loss, tinnitus (I did not have that at the beginning) and also less reactivity to sound.

 

How did you end up?

I walked my dog by a playground with a bunch of screaming kids earlier this afternoon.

Spiking really bad now. I should have put my earplugs in my POS ears! :-(

 

Should be temporary honestly, as I’ve said my son yells near my ear randomly. He has screamed 2 times in my truck and I measured it later at 100 dB. It did worsen me over time obviously, but not a single event.

 

That's good to know. However, it was a group of kids. I hurried past and I just thought I'd be faster if I just kept moving. Bad mistake. :-(

I managed some sleep but woke up and spike is still bad.

 

I don’t get it... After I was potty trained I remember my life. I only screamed when I got a finger in the car door...

 

My case is not normal, but yeah you don’t want to know where I’m at right now. Can’t leave the house, I get pain from birds outside, pain from traffic outside, little door squeaks. Absolutely not worth the risk. Most people don’t worsen like me but I wish I was more on the safe side. Pain hyperacusis can become your biggest fear, best to protect at all times.

 

Lol yeah if I screamed I would get soap in my mouth.

 

Any improvement? Positive outlook? Not trying to be sarcastic.

 

Thx for checking. It’s about about the same, it calms down if I’m in silence for a while but the threshold is getting lower every day. Trying to see a neurologist but they want me to jump through hoops to see one. I have about one more trip leaving the house left in me until I become one of the worse cases. Sucks man, all I can do is pray.