Diplacusis/Dysacusis and Possibly Early Stage Hyperacusis

I feel like my life is genuinely over. Like I am expired and dying instead of living.

I had a severe bout with tinnitus a while back but now I'm left with a terrible condition in both ears.

I'm not sure if it's dysacusis or diplacusis because I cannot find anything on this online.

When I listen to music, all notes past a certain frequency (I think around 900-ish Hz) sounds sharp by about a half step. It's driving me nuts, all music sounds like a jumbled mess. It's unbearable, not to mention physically painful which is why I believe I'm developing hyperacusis.

Music was genuinely my life until it was swept from me like it was nothing. This is the 4th or 5th day of this happening and it is just getting worse. I am so scared this is permanent.

Does anyone else have something like this?

 

The only thing we can do is to wait and hope our ears will heal themselves.

Some people here have reported it can fade away after 3, 6, 9, 12 months...

 

Start bookmarking positive, encouraging stories of recovery on here. Only read those. I'm going to follow my own advice and stay off of other threads, they keep your focus on the tinnitus and hyperacusis. Read posts from JJflyman and TomCnyc they are encouraging. There is a guy on YouTube who talks about diplacusis, I think his name is Ryan. Praying it gets better and you find some calm soon.

 

Even just 1 month is too much. And it's not just these threads that keep my focus on this, it's that music sounds wrong to me. Notes are several tones sharp or flat. So all music is unintelligible. I can't do anything about it.

 

I'm so sorry. I love music, but I'm not a musician. I can imagine that would be very devastating. One of the guys in the success stories was/is a musician. It may help to talk to another musician. Take care ~

 

Yeah I know how you feel. I miss music too. I get from music, TV, voices, ... distortion and a crazy overtone that sounds squeaky like wahh wahh. I haven't been able to listen to music since this started 7 weeks ago.

 

I'd just rather be deaf or dead.

 

There's people on this forum who have had hyperacusis for over 20 years... I think there is a guy who has had hyperacusis for like 25 years, but he no longer posts a lot.

 

That is not really helpful. I miss my old tinnitus. When it comes back and overwhelms me I feel a sense of relief because it's what "silence" sounds like to me.

 

Sufferers of dysacusis here, have you ever had wild random shifts or fluctuations in a small amount of time? I stretched really hard and it caused a huge spike in my tinnitus. Then literally all sounds became extremely distorted: tv, music, air conditioner etc. Then like 15 minutes later my dysacusis was literally all gone for another 15-30 minutes-ish. So I was listening to music as it was meant to be heard again for the first time in weeks, at a low volume though. Now my dysacusis is slowly coming back and music is starting to have all kinds of hellish noises again...

I started taking prednisone today btw. Should I taper off or keep following the prescription. I was also on prednisone a little over a month ago. I had hope my dysacusis would go away permanently but not anymore after that euphoria trip...

I fear I have permanent cochlear damage since my tinnitus is at least related to noise exposure,but the dysacusis and hyperacusis (?) symptoms seemed to have started independently. I used headphones a lot until last month

 

I've been suffering from dysacusis since December 2 probably because of noise induced hearing loss. On December 2 it was really bad, hearing double tones on everything.

December 3 - 5 it was barely noticeable.

Then on December 6 shit was hitting the fan, it was getting much worse, and my worst two days were the 9th and the 10th.

On December 9 I started to take Prednisone which I will continue to take for a while longer and then going through a taper off phase...

The last two days I was extremely, EXTREMELY sensitive to noises and I thought I was on the verge of developing hyperacusis. When I woke up I noticed most of this sensitivity is now gone and some distortions I heard the last few days are gone. However I still get enough distortion to ruin any music, TV, video games etc. (coming from the SOURCE of the sound and not my own ears).

But maybe it's getting better? Should I have hope that this dysacusis subsides completely, that the aggressive Prednisone treatment may help? Especially since I got it not long after getting intolerable dysacusis.

 

I agree, that's not very helpful.

 

It sounds like you're already in the early stages of loudness hyperacusis; distortions are generally a symptom of that.

 

Today my sound distortions are noticeably less than they were yesterday! This is crazy, maybe the aggressive Prednisone + Methylprednisolone treatment (went through so much trouble to get a script for these) is actually doing something. I can play video games and watch movies without wincing in pain from sounds. Music is still pretty fucked up unless I EQ it... but some songs previously unintelligible to me are now listenable even without EQing. Here's to hoping. I am still trying to get as much silence as possible however. I'm really going to take care of my ears if I actually recover.

 

Hi Nico, do you have the distortion in both ears or only one?

 

Both ears but it was always far worse in the right than the left.

 

Wow... one of my tinnitus sounds has completely disappeared and distortions in most sounds seems to be surely subsiding. Hope by 2021 things are almost healed all the way.

 

Talking about distorted hearing (broken speaker + whooshing coming from sounds, NOT reactive tinnitus).

Are there any more than a few cases of this completely resolving?

I was on an upward trend for a few days a while back and then I've plateaued at a semi shitty level. I have read that generally this is due to synaptopathy in which case I would be out of luck. But I know of others who recovered without really doing anything other than protecting their ears (but not 100% recovery). I can't even bear to live with the slightest level of this.

@Tom Cnyc is the only case of total improvement I know of with an extremely similar pathology to me and @weab00 has seen improvement from this as well as @GBB but that's all I know of.

EDIT: Forgot about @Jason C, if anyone else has similar issues, his story is inspiring.

 

I think I remember reading @FGG having this distortion problem.

There are probably more cases where it went away but people just didn't post about it.

 

I very much have "broken speaker" but no "whooshing", if that counts then yes, I have this primarily just with music though and certain other sounds.

 

I also get this but with white noise or any appliance running, it's a baseline tinnitus sound that's a low hum but spikes to morse code over these sounds. I also have a wineglass hum with brown noise playing.

Normal tinnitus is easily masked and a joke compared to distortion. Thankfully most music is still intelligible to me.

I track my hearing weekly and the right ear with the hum is definitely worsening in the low frequencies... it's as if 500 Hz had a baseline volume where I hear it clearly, or it becomes a complete mess in the wavering. It doesn't get "quiet until I can't hear it"... it's an all or nothing, but ONLY with that frequency and a tiny bit around 250 Hz.

I'm posting my last hearing test so you all can get an idea of what it would look like... clearly I don't have "hearing loss", but the otoacoustic emission shows noise induced loss of hair cells, unfortunately the test was too shittily done for any info about 500 Hz (too much noise to get a reading on the outer hair cells represented by the gray area, no checkmark with white underneath means likely a weak response).

Interesting that my hair cells even at the loss area are stupid good at hearing.



My high frequency hearing @ 10 kHz (not shown) is bat like (up to -15 dB) and apparently abnormal.

I wasn't provided with any "normal values" for people my age, which is a huge shame and a complaint I had. The test was done quite badly and in a noisy environment, it's only after I've read up on it that I've realized it could've been way more sensitive / instructive.

This was also on one of my better tinnitus / distortion days, so who knows! At least outer hair cells weren't dying when it was worse days apparently, which gives me some confidence.