Delayed Onset of Tinnitus a Few Days After a Friend Shot a Rifle 10 Feet from Me

I was camping with some friends a few weeks ago and one of them was sighting in a rifle. He fired one shot approximately 10 feet from me. I had no ear protection on and was unprepared. My ears rang for a minute or so and then it went away.

Fast forward a few days later, I woke up with a muffled right ear and tinnitus.

I saw an ENT 2 weeks ago who gave me a hearing test. My right ear was severely diminished. I feel that I tested so bad because my tinnitus frequencies drowned out much of the beeping noises they played.

I have been on steroids for 2 weeks and will go back for a follow-up on Thursday; I do not think I have gotten any better.

Did that random shot and 3 days of silence culminate in hearing damage?

 

Mine also started on the third or fourth day after acoustic trauma but doctors did not found any hearing loss. I got my ears checked 3 weeks after my trauma. Some members here said that if the ringing was delayed then it's a good sign indicating a better chance for recovery.

 

THIS is the only time I'd suggest steroid injections and HBO based on the army studies, as what happened to you is identical, and even more pertinent as you have hearing loss. My old sargent also always told us if it ever happened to be in silence for 2 weeks (ear plugs constantly). The studies also used Betahistine/other vasodilators (limited help). Magnesium, antioxidants, arginine.
Use benzos for the time being to keep repressing it from taking hold in the meantime (one week max.
It is much too late to reduce blast induced hydrops with hypertonic saline. Steroids might help.
If you could even inject some saline into your middle ear via ENT....iunno....if they did that I'd hope there'd be steroids too.
You suffered blast damage...nerves are dying weeks later from the hydrops which occur in mice models, and will continue to degenerate slowly for months.

 

So it is considered normal to have no symptoms for a few days and then all of a sudden there is hearing damage and ringing?

 

Yes. Every study I've read shows that hearing damage occurs in 3 stages: Initial mechanical death (shockwave such as a firearm), metabolic death, nerve cell swelling (metabolic death) and later apoptotic signalling if disconnected for too long (so more death). One is instant, the other takes some time (where some hair cells recover, others die over mostly 3 weeks), and the last is also over a couple months (where some re-synapse and some do not when the swelling comes down), those that do not re-synapse die over the course of several years (hence where medicine is looking at now with injections of brain factors to promote the nerves that are alive to "stretch" back and re-synapse).

This is all in mammals other than humans, but that's how we science.

The nice thing is regenerative medicine seems to be coming to make use of "what you've got left", so you won't be 100% but certainly should improve hearing and tinnitus.

 

Can I be confident that it’s not some sort of acoustic neuroma or something else? Bit of a hypochondriac over here...