Do You Think There Is a Connection Between the Spinal Leak I Experienced and My Tinnitus?

Hi there again, thank you for your reply to my previous q regarding my tinnitus being caused by mastubating. I wanted to put it by you, that 3 weeks before I began to get depressed and mastubate, I had a pretty bad spinal leak, my hearing went to double tone, muffled and I had a generator noise in my head. This was really distressing. 3 days later I was diagnosed and given a blood patch which resolved everything. No noise, all gone.... Silence. Then I began masubating and bang, tinnitus. Do you think there is a connection with the said spinal leak...? Maybe it weakened something in my auditory area? Or would I have got t anyway despite the leak? Thank you kindly

 

Hi @Penelope33 -

Tough to make that connection given that your tinnitus began three weeks after the blood patch. If the "generator noise" you describe was identical to your tinnitus, maybe. Then again, we haven't even considered whatever it was that led your doctors to recommend a lumbar puncture in the first place. And then there's the possibility of coincidence. And then ... and then ... and then ...

Perhaps here's a better way to look at it. Let's say I told you that, yes, I am absolutely certain that the spinal leak caused your tinnitus. What difference would it make? You cannot "undo" the LP. And spinal leaks are an unfortunate but accepted complication that can occur even in the best of hands. So it's not like you are going to sue your doc for negligence.

The fact is that whatever caused the tinnitus you have had for the past six months or so, it is nothing you can do anything about - so the end result of continuing to wonder what it might have been is that you are unnecessarily spending time attending to your tinnitus. You deal with it necessarily enough as it is, right? Why unnecessarily add time to that??!!

Best regards -

Dr. Stephen Nagler