Got Tinnitus from Stupidly Not Wearing Earplugs at a Concert Last Week. Not Sure When to Give Up.

Yea, for me this is also the case. When I wake in the morning is the best part of my day as far as my tinnitus is concerned. It's till there of course, but it's at the lowest level of intensity that it ever is, so I often find myself lingering there in bed and just sleeping in late a lot because I know as soon as I get up and become exposed to the normal morning sounds my tinnitus will ramp up to it's normal disgusting level of annoyance. I'm retired, so I have that luxury of being able to remain in my relatively quiet bedroom if I so choose.

I'm wondering because your tinnitus experience in the morning is similar to mine, do you also have significant hyperacusis? Do you have significant hearing loss in one or both ears? Finally, is your tinnitus of the "hissing static noise" kind?

 

@JohnFox

My tinnitus is the hissing static noise. I liken it to the background noise on a cassette tape.

At one point I had some hyperacusis, and it was very annoying. The dishes clinking, and microwave beeping was quite uncomfortable. Thankfully, most of that passed.

No significant hearing loss on the audiogram.

 

That's exactly how my tinnitus sounds. And my hyperacusis too, the dishes clanking together are intolerable. It would be great if my hyperacusis went away and I didn't have to insert earplugs so often. My ENT told me that I had a good chance of seeing the hyperacusis subside. Hope so.

 

The hyperacusis was worse than the tinnitus to me when it got bad. Hang in there as mine did, but the key IMHO is to avoid the further noise to allow the ears to heal, and to try and get good sleep.

 

It's not just pain hyperacusis being separate from loudness.

We don't even know what hyperacusis is or how many types of hyperacusis there are, even different types of loudness hyperacusis may be separate, Perhaps missing soft sound nerve fibers while the loud sound nerve fibers survive can cause "loudnesss hyperacusis", or something damaged in the middle ear. Not just always neurological but evidence suggest that it also can be. Their could be multiple problems going on at once.

The word hyperacusis describes so many different conditions, and we haven't got beyond the word hyperacusis.

I wonder if research on this topic 10 years from now will be more advance?, or will we just continue to call several complex unrelated pathology problems in the auditory disorders hyperacusis. It's honestly scary when you read articles on PubMed about hyperacusis as if all patients are reporting the same thing when they are not. Palliative medicine throws everyone in the same boat, that's the problem.

 

My whole issue began suddenly at night while sleeping. My total hearing loss in right ear, tinnitus, and Hyperacusis all hit me at night suddenly. It was not noise induced, so even though I am careful about exposing myself to loud noise, I’m not sure doing that will help my ears “heal”. The doctors don’t know why this happened, although I personally think a serious motorcycle accident I was in 4 months prior to the hearing loss, had something to do with it. The brain is a complicated thing.

 

Certainly scary to wake up with something like this. If you had a head injury, the T can be related to a concussion, and come at a later date.

Another possibility though I know I have fallen asleep without earplugs, and then I wake up with ear fullness, and a large increase in T. This has happen to me with the TV at a lower moderate volume, or even without anything on, and just from traffic noise I suppose- but not enough to wake me up. I seem quite susceptible to these sleeping spikes, and perhaps others are as well.

 

When it comes to tinnitus, there is essentially no difference between a good and a less regarded ENT. They are all equally unable to help. And they all equally cherry pick information to suit the patient situation (or their own situation, for that matter).

However, for those interested in what the best ENT care would look like, here is a link to paper that was published recently on the otologic morbidity (and recovery) of patients from the Brussels bombing in 2016:

Otologic Outcomes After Blast Injury: The Brussels Bombing Experience

A similar paper was published after the Boston Marathon bombing:

Otologic Outcomes After Blast Injury: The Boston Marathon Experience

 

I'd like to add that a bad ENT might try to worsen the T by applying an acoustic reflex test. That happened to me, but I interrupted the test early on and got away seemlingly without harm.

Oh, and they might also advice people not to protect their ears against further damage, in spite of our modern world being filled with unnaturally loud sounds.

I don't expect medical professionals to work miracles, but this sheer incompetence makes me wonder if planet Earth is used as a trash bin for hopeless cases in the reincarnation cycle: those who have proven unable to learn obvious and simple lesson come here and become ENTs.

 

Any muffled hearing?

 

@Mila9828

No muffled hearing routinely, or at this point. I have experienced muffled hearing after loud noise exposure, and it lasts for a few days for me. As it improved, then the T got really worse.