First Long-Term Spike (from Going Out to a Noisy Bar) After Many Years of Mild Tinnitus

Hi guys, I’ll try to make this as brief as possible, but I’ve been having an awful time the last month and a half.

I’ve had mild tinnitus since 2013 from a specific concert where I stood too close to a drum set without earplugs (I’ve been wearing musician’s plugs to concerts ever since). Sometimes after loud concerts or when I have a cold, I’ll have a day where my tinnitus is louder than usual, but it has always returned to normal afterwards.

A month and a half ago, I went out to a noisy bar with a friend (no live music, but loud chatter on a patio and music on the PA for a couple hours). I listened to the stereo pretty loud on the way home and noticed when I got home that my tinnitus was spiking.

Ever since that evening, my tinnitus has been louder than before and I’ve had ear pain and am more sensitive to loud noises. I saw my primary care doctor who tried giving me a Prednisone taper and some Klonopin to ease my nerves for a week or two. The Klonopin helped (and has continued to help) dull the pain (.5 mg twice a day), but the pain has still persisted.

He referred me to an audiologist who did a hearing test and confirmed that despite the louder ringing, I have no hearing loss. I then was referred to an ENT doctor who offered no help but said she may put me down for a future study (I asked about a possible cortisol injection I’d read about but she said it’d be too risky).

Next I visited my dentist to see if it may be a TMJ issue. She did a check of my jaw/mouth and said she didn’t believe it was a TMJ problem (though I have had a root canal and teeth removed a few months ago, waiting for it to heal before I get an implant in a couple months).

Finally, I went to a neurologist who helped me with chronic migraines I developed last year just before the pandemic began. She had prescribed me Nortriptyline which essentially knocked the migraines out completely. She first tried doubling the dose to see if that’d help with the current situation but it did not. I just started a sample pack of Nurtec to see if that’ll help, but halfway through that, it doesn’t seem to be.

Additional info that may be pertinent: I received the second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine one month before the night out where the spike/ear pain started. After receiving each dose I had the standard aches and cold symptoms that most people had but nothing else.

So I’m not sure if it’s noise trauma, TMJ, asymptomatic COVID-19 or vaccine related, but the pain and sensitivity has made it a lot harder for me to work/focus and since I’m a music journalist, I’m supposed to be covering concerts again very soon and this timing is awful. Happy to hear any thoughts from you guys on this. Appreciate your time.

 

Concerts aren’t worth the risk… you have damaged your ears but don’t have hyperacusis (yet!). Give up the concerts and be thankful your ears aren’t worse…

 

Please give up the one thing in life you are most passionate about

 

Sorry to sound sobering, but I agree with @NewLionel; you should give your ears some rest and try to avoid loud noise completely, or you may end up much worse than this.

You seem to have a precursor of hyperacusis, and the risk of it worsening can be an extreme danger to your life. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it can be one of humanities most debilitating conditions.

I'm very sorry to say this, but if I were you, I'd definitely look into getting quieter job. I'm not saying that to be rude, but out of experience from dealing with life altering hyperacusis.

Please, take care of yourself, man.

I wish you all the best and that your spike do recede in time,
Stacken

 

Well I am musician who had to give up music... I would kill to be in your position where all I had to do was give up live concerts.

Concerts are never going to happen for me again. I just hope I can make music again.

 

Your story sounds a little similar to mine at least with the whole getting it from a noisy bar roughly a month after the 2nd dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Yeah concerts are a pretty risky move about making the condition worse with great potential to prevent you from living a relatively normal life. But if you really want to go to them that badly I would recommend avoiding ones in venues and sticking to outdoor ones where you can sit safely in the back with some earplugs where it isn't as much of a risk. In venues the sound waves bounce around more with no way to escape making it pretty unsafe for ears and especially damaged ears.

It might be worth starting to take supplements that are good for neural health and minimize ear damage like magnesium and antioxidants.

We may be lucky enough to see some sort of actual treatment to fix the damage in the next decade or so but best to play it safe for now.

 

I don't mean to sound cruel, but many of us have had to give up a lot more than just going to concerts. Some of us have had to give up our careers and lifelong hobbies because of tinnitus.

Trust me, you will give up ANYTHING once your tinnitus gets bad enough to not have it get worse.

Protect your hearing, stop going to concerts, and try to live a normal life. It sucks, but the alternative is much worse.

 

Yup, tinnitus is a ruthless bitch! I don't understand why they always want to medicate us with antidepressants. It does nothing for the noise and hearing loss. So the problem is still there.

 

Sarcasm won't get you very far, although I appreciate such a suggestion can sound unreasonable to a newcomer. This condition is the plague and must be respected for the beast that it is. As others have mentioned, they have to give up a lot in their life in order to be able to manage this condition. Take it from me: classically trained, multi-instrumental musician for 20 years, self-taught recording and mix engineer and I also had a job that relied totally on my ears. I lost my job, career and house because of this condition.

The sooner you take this condition seriously and make the lifestyle adjustments that are needed to aid acute injury, the better your chances that you will not have this chronically. If quitting is not an option, I would explore the possibility of an indefinite, unpaid sabbatical until you get better, which could be years (as is the case for the lucky ones who do improve - they are not in the majority).

I can guarantee this though: if you walk into a concert again, even if you manage to recover from this, you are playing with fire. Many here disappear from this forum, not because they get better, but because they pull the plug from getting worse. Heed our advice and you may escape such a fate.

We don't mean to strike the fear of God into you, but rest assured it is coming from a good place.

TLDR: quit your job, immediately.

 

Yeah I hate to add on to this, but I got my tinnitus from my second week at a concert photography internship. I had to wear earplugs with earmuffs to ensure I didn't mess up my tinnitus further, and it was incredibly isolating. And who knows, if I hadn't continued going to shows, maybe my tinnitus maybe would have gone away.

I was able to finish the internship, but I'm now in the early stages of developing noxacusis which is far more terrifying and debilitating. If you keep going to concerts, it is a very real probability that you could develop it, and then you wont be able to listen to music at all, much less have a life. at the very least, you should take a break from going to concerts for at least several months to a year. If you think this is bad right now, trust me, it can get 1000 times worse.

 

Are you talking about hyperacusis or tinnitus?

Anyway, great chunk of advice there.

 

Both, separate but primarily together. I have hyperacusis and tinnitus, and this makes the tinnitus spike both temporarily and permanently to low level noise, we're talking fridge humming levels. I'm effectively confined to total isolation, in hearing protection all hours of the day.

I usually try to maintain a positive attitude towards things, but the plain truth is that things can get perpetually worse, both in terms of tinnitus and hyperacusis, and even though the suffering increases, there's no end in sight. That's what made me make the quoted conclusion. I will not survive 60-70 years in the state I'm in right now, it won't happen, so the only hope I have is for improvements or a cure.

Stacken

 

Mine, which will be 6 years old this next Saturday, has been loud enough since day one to be able to be heard over any other noise with few exceptions (shower, sometimes). Loud angry angle grinder sound. I've been through lots of random spikes, multiple durations. Horrible. The feeling of it being permanently aggravated makes me feel overwhelmingly bad. It upsets my stomach and makes me feel terrible anxiety. Luckily, every spike has subsided... so far.

 

Does anyone know how @AaronRKC is doing? I find it of tremendous bad manners not to let us know if the spike resolved or not. It definitely doesn't help.

 

Not to mention his profile picture:



( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)╭∩╮

 

Maybe Aaron got YOU lackin' @Damocles

 

@Stacken77, if Aaron ever "gets me" in any capacity; it won't be "lackin"

It'll be packin'

̿̿ ̿̿ ̿̿ ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з= (⌐▀͡ ̯ʖ▀) =ε/̵͇̿̿/’̿’̿ ̿ ̿̿ ̿̿ ̿̿

HEAT

So Aaron can come at me.

 

You’re pretty skilled at these handmade emojis or whatever you would call them!

 

He maybe got offended because we were spitting Truth™.

It takes certain kind of people to handle the Truth™...

Hope he is well though.

 

In the words of the late great @JohnAdams: