Better, then worse...

Hello everyone! As somebody else here has said, writing this is a lot for your own sake, you need to talk about your affliction, but it is hard for others to understand how this condition can rule your life, and I don't want to burden my family too much with worries over me. So here is my story. I've had tinnitus in my left ear since October 2006. I have no idea why it started, it could very well be due to stress, since I'd been under a lot of pressure for a couple of years. It was a great shock, and I think that initial shock lasts for a long time and you are desperate for a cure. My ENT mentioned it might be muscle tension and recommended massage and acupuncture. She also prescribed Prednisolone and a steroid nasal spray. That didn't do anything and we then tried muscle relaxing pills, with no result. I went to acupuncture for about 3 years, don't know if it helped, and I still regularly go to massage, since that's a good thing on the whole. And I still take Nasonex, though I've never noticed that it has any effect on my tinnitus. After about a year my tinnitus stabilized on a level that I could handle, I learned how to mask it, the sounds that worked etc. It didn't occupy my thoughts all the time anymore. Then a few months ago it suddenly got worse. The tinnitus has always been accompanied by a feeling of pressure in my ear, and now this pressure has increased and my ear tends to close up constantly. And as many of you will know, when the ear is blocked the sound of tinnitus is much worse. My sound is like an engine constantly running inside a tin can, and my head is the can. When you close the lid the sound has nowhere to go and it becomes more low pitched and more physical, vibrating. I don't know why the ear closes up like that, I have to try to equalize the pressure all the time. I had a cold a while back and right away my ear totally closed and I couldn't pop it at all, not until I got a prescription for Prednisolone. A few weeks ago I went on a flight and again I got totally blocked (despite ear planes). Sudafed helped that time. I suspect my eustachian tubes are up the creek, but who knows. I feel I could deal with the tinnitus, but not with the pressure and blockage which is very unpleasant in itself but also makes the tinnitus very difficult to manage. I'm in a very dark place right now, worse than when the tinnitus first appeared, that was horrible but at least I had some hope that it might get better (everyone tells you that it will). And it did, but now there is no hope, if it can get worse like this how much worse can it get in the future. I have an appointment with an audiologist next week, to try out a hearing aid with masking sounds. That might help, but there is still the trouble with the blockages and I would really like to find out what is wrong, why that happens and is there really no help for that. I don't have high hopes though, it is so hard to get somebody to be interested enough in your problem to try and get to the bottom of the reasons for it. But thank you all for being here from a fellow sufferer.

 

Feel for you, Catarina. It seems the worsening of your T has different origin than the onset. There's no reason your doctor can't help you to find a therapy. There are solutions, take a look (there are several pages):
http://www.medicinenet.com/eustachi...2.htm#what_can_cause_eustachian_tube_blockage
You already did a good job in the past so, please, don't think how much worse it can get in the future. Easy to say, but it doesn't help.

 

Thanks Carlos, for kind words and for the link. And you're right, anxiety is the worst enemy.