Having a Hard Time Finding the Happy in My Tinnitus, Any Help Appreciated

Hello everyone, I'm new to this so I'll just explain my story, sorry if its long but I don't know anyone else with T, so this has been really hard on me. I often turned to this website for comfort that I wasn't the only one.

My tinnitus began exactly 2 months ago, in my left ear only, as a very high pitched constant tone. It came at the worst possible time for me as I was set to study 6 months for my CPA liscensing exam which takes place in 1 month. It has disrupted so much of my studying and plans to pass this exam, which make me all the more depressed when I think of how unfair it is that this happened to me at the end of my 7 years of studying.

The day I got tinnitus, I thought it was a migraine. So I went rested for the day and when I woke up the next day, I realized it wasn't gone and I started to get scared. Initially the T was so bad for the first 12 days that I thought my life was over. It woke up me up during the night, and I was sleeping with pretty loud white noise.

I went to see an ENT who looked in my ear for 5 seconds, told me he saw nothing and that if it was really unberable we could do a cortisone shot in the left ear. Needless to say I wasn't going to make those kinds of the decisions in the state I was in, so I left. Afterwards I read about people doing these and it making their T worse.

The next day I saw a private general doctor. He told me I had to stay calm because it was likely due to an ear infection which can take 2-3 weeks to clear but they can't prescribe anything for it. He said the more nervous I got the worse it would likely get. Which is hard for me, as I was trying to study everyday and the Tinnitus was making it so difficult.

He sent me for several tests: EKG (Normal), Brain MRI with contrast (Found chronic sinnisitus in the right nostril - but my T is in the left ear, so they concluded not related. Also saw a neurologist that said its not coming from anything in my brain.), full blood panel testing for everything under the sun (All came back normal), Ultrasound of the neck (Normal - although I'm not even sure what that was for). I must mention that I lost some hearing in my left ear (the ear with the T), but that was 15 years ago. I was about 11-12 when my parents noticed. I'm 26 now. The hearing loss is so insignificant that I can have a conversation perfectly fine without any hearing aid. The doctor said he doesn't think the 2 are related.

A few days after I saw the doctor, and before going for all the tests he recommended, I took a very low dose Ativan, because I have a fear of needles. So the morning of my blood test I took one. That day, my T significantly dropped, and over the course of the next 7 days it dissapeared almost completely, except for occasional night time T. But I didn't care, it was gone all day, I could deal with some night T. I ran all the tests anyways, but at that point I was convinced the doctor was right and it was just an infection clearing.

Well after about 8-10 days of peace, it came back. this time the noise had changed. It changes daily, sometimes tea kettle boiling water sound, sometimes sounded like salt and pepper shakers, sometimes it sounds like static all over my head. Its worse after about 5-6pm, I find it hard to get any peace. I keep music on my phone no matter what I'm doing. At night I take melatonin and occasionnaly low dose Xanax to fall asleep. But I've decided to stop the occasional Xanax because it gets me more depressed I find.

So ever since then, It has gone for 1-5 days at time (with excpetion of little residual T), and then it returns. And I get anxious and afraid again. I should be grateful that it never came back as loud as the first time, I should be thankful that its not in both ears, I have a million things to be thankful for. But I can't feel any of those, because I'm too busy dealing with the crippling anxiety that every minute I don't hear it, I know its coming back. What scares me more, is knowing that I'm only 26 and I have a whole life ahead of me, and I'm so extremely afraid of it coming back to the noise I had when I initially got T. It was so loud I didn't think I could live with it, I would prefer not hearing at all.

I am now turning to natural medicine, Osteopath and Naturopath, because I have nothing to loose anymore.

Has anyone had an experience similar to mine? T thats not noise induced, medication induced, that has no apparent cause? Or that the noise changes daily and sometimes goes away entirely? Has anyone had the cortisone shot done? Has anyone had relief with natural medicine / supplements? Did anyones T go away when they main stress trigger in their life dissapeared? I'm afraid I gave myself this over my stupid CPA exam.

I am also taking 6 lipoflavonoids per day now. I know many people say it doesn't help but it can't hurt and I'll try anything at this point.

Any type of advice, words of encouragement or anything at all would be so helpful.

Thank you
Melissa

 

Hi, So u actually got in to see a neurologist because of your T? Howd they rule out that it wasn't a brain issue?

 

Yes, everything was done with private doctors here in Mtl, so I paid for all the doctors I saw. He looked at all the brain MRI images and concluded that it was not brain related. I'm not quite sure how he did it, and he didn't say much else afterwards.