Back Again — Myringotomy for Tinnitus?

Hello T sufferers -

I have returned to the forums for the first time in six years after initially getting T from a very loud television while playing poker at a bar, and probably resulting from years of abuse at concerts, car stereos, etc. I loved music a little too much.

I had a horrible time with T when I first got it in 2011. I got intratympanic injections of steroids into my eardrums which saved hearing in one ear, but I had moderate ringing in both ears and found myself depressed and upset about what had happened to me. It seemed like over time the ringing volume went down. I had it in both ears at about a 4/10 for a month or two, but over the course of six months or a year the ringing declined to very faint in my left ear and low volume in my right ear. I habituated, and stopped noticing it all day and I got my life back. It made me a little sad that I can't hear crickets anymore in the woods, but daily life was still good.

I've been pretty careful over the past six years. I haven't attended a concert, I don't go see movies in the theaters, I wear hearing protection when I do anything that could possibly injure them - mowing the lawn, vacuuming, or going to a loud restaurant. But I made a big mistake about a month ago. I took my son to an indoor playground where they have bounce houses, jungle gyms, gymnasiums, and they play birthday songs for kids. It wasn't LOUD, but it's noisy with motors whirring and kids yelling. I was running around after my son, and I neglected to get hearing muffs from the car. We stayed four hours.

The last month has been total hell again. I had a spike in T immediately after going but I wasn't sure whether it was severe enough to seek medical help because it was going up and down in volume every day or two. After two weeks, I sought help from my ENT. I've since been on a 21 day course of prednisone and I had one intratympanic injection in my right ear. The steroids and the injection have made no improvement in my hearing tests, although I did have two days of relatively quieter ears directly after the injection. I'm going in cycles where I have days of really loud ringing in one or both ears, then a couple days of quieter ringings, and then maybe back to loud. I get hopeful on the quieter days and super depressed on the loud days. I'm hoping that my ears will settle down like they did in 2011 over time, but I fear that they won't and I get scared that they will stabilize at this loud volume which impacts my life and sanity.

Because the steroids haven't had much of an effect, my ENT wants to do a bilateral myringotomy, (i.e., insert tubes into my ears to allow me to deliver steroids directly to the eardrums a couple times a day). I've searched the message boards and googled, and I've never seen this treatment being used anywhere for noise induced tinnitus. I don't fully trust my ENT as he specializes in sinus issues, not ears. Has anyone had this done for noise induced tinnitus and had any success? Or any complications? I don't know that I can take making this ringing volume any worse than it is, but if it worked it be a godsend.