Head Sound

Hello I'm 26 years and from Norway.

I first heard my tinnitus on 1 or 2 march. I've had problems with earwax build ups during the last couple of years (probably because I sleep with earbuds 4-5 nights a week). The couple of weeks before I got my tinnitus I felt that my ears were a bit full and lately my right ear has started making louder than normal sounds when I swallow.
I thought this was another earwax problem so I went about with it like I've done the last times by applying Revaxør. Its some oil you drop into your ear to loosen the wax up over night and then use some sort of balloon looking device to pump water into the ear afterwards. I got some out but I thought there were more in the ear so I probably kept spraying water too much and perhaps too hard into my ear.

I can't really say I heard much sounds right after but on Friday night (1 day later) I had problems sleeping, which ain't uncommon since I struggle with insomnia. It was then I first heard what sounded like a very high pitch noise that just got louder and louder the more I tried to sleep. I gave up and went online to google... this was probably the worst I could have done since I read so much horror stories about tinnitus that within a hour it sounded 10 times worse than it did first.

I thought I'd go to the doctor to check what could cause this but it was weekend so had to wait til Monday. I got a appointment at Wednesday (luckily since waiting times usually are pretty long). The time between Friday and Wednesday were very hard and I only slept 2-3 hours a day due to stress about this sound and the prospect of having it the rest of my life (the result of my nightly google adventure).

I didn't get to see my normal doctor that I know pretty good since it was a short notice visit so I got some woman I've never seen before. This was a major problem for me since I only managed to partly get the ear problem explained and nothing about the stress and panic.

This is because I struggle with social anxiety and got problems talking with people I don't know (I'm working on this and is in much better shape than I was a year ago, when I had been pretty much isolating myself for a good 2-3 years). She didn't have the foggiest what could cause this noise and checked my ears (but she did this pretty fast so I don't know how much she actually looked.) She gave me some pills named Rinexin incase my sinus was the problem causing this.

My mental state was none the better and the lack of sleep was starting to catch up with me so I was not functional in my daily life, feeling so sleepy and constantly listening to this noise, wondering why I had to be tortured like this and why there was no easy way to fix it. Some days later I got to visit my normal doctor and explained my problems but it didn't seem like he knew much about tinnitus either and gave me some benzos for my sleep. I kept using these pills each night and it calmed me down enough to start sleeping normally again. The days were still pretty bad since the pills only had a 10 hour half-life, but I managed to get somewhat back to my daily life again but still having waves of panic and despair rolling onto me when I started to think too much about my current state of intruding noises.

The days and weeks went on and my mental state got better with time, I also noticed that when my nose got blocked the sound got much louder. The only way to fix this was either use nasal spray or strangely enough squeeze my ear so it sounded like air was escaping it (????).

This got me into thinking something was wrong with my eardrum but it cant be ruptured since my hearing is like it always has been. Since then I have been using nasal spray like a mad man, and I already had a unhealthy relationship with these sprays. I also read somewhere online that you should not lie flat when sleeping if you have problems with your eustachian tube, so I have been sleeping more or less sitting since then, which to me seems to work at least together with keeping my nose open.

Today I have not had any panic problems about the sound, and to me it sounds less in volume, to the point that I could sit in my living room with just normal sounds without getting stressed out for a while.

Sorry for the long text and bad grammar since this is not my native language.

So the thing im wondering about, could I have some pressure problem in my ear that causes this sound? I know the panic and anxiety made it much worse than it actually was for the first couple of weeks so with that problem starting to slowly go away its more livable but I still hear the sound when its quiet or when I think enough about it.

I don't even know what brought this problem on... it could be the ear cleaning or sleeping for years with earplugs or loud music. I don't believe much in the latter since I've not been to any concerts or listened to that loud music on my mp3 player.

 

@Nordland90
Welcome to TT and so very sorry to hear about your struggles.
A lot of us are unsure why we have tinnitus, but noise exposure is cumulative and listening to loud music via headphones could be partly to blame.
It can take a while to habituate to tinnitus, I'm 8 months in and still having those moments of despair and hopelessness, but when I look back 7 months, I am so much better than I was when I first got it.
Recently I too noticed a pressure feeling in my ears / head and I could hear a roaring sound when standing up and in a quiet room. It would completely over power my regular tinnitus. So I used a nasal spray for a couple of weeks and now the roaring and the pressure is gone. So yes, I believe that pressure and fluid issues can cause some kinds of tinnitus.
How is your sleep going now? Are you using benzos still?

 

I would think it was likely to be the bulb that you used on yourself. I'd avoid doing that in the future. I had a mild wax build up and o refused to get my ears syringes as my husband (a GP) told me that ear syringing was one of the top reasons patients sue their GP. That put the frighteners in me as us Brits are not renound for suing.

 

Thanks for your words @Samantha R. I have been trying to stay away from reading too much about tinnitus online since this how my small sound got into a horrible sound in the first place. I stopped taking benzos 3 days after I made this first post and it went pretty fine. I'm still using some other pills for anxiety (Atarax, some oldschool antihistamine medicine that got some sedative traits) can't say they are working all that great but they calm you down somewhat. The plus about them is that you can't get hooked on them like benzo pills.

I went back to the doctor last week and he gave me ears a proper check (unlike the first doctor). He looked into them whilst I was doing valsalvas and he could see that my left eardrum is not popping out at all, in fact its retracted. He thinks that I might have ETD so got some nasal spray (Nasonex) that I'm going to use for some weeks, he also ordered a ENT appointment for me. But that could take awhile because the Norwegian health system is in shambles... if I get in within 2-3 months I consider myself lucky.

So now im using this corticosteroid nasal spray twice a day (After some internet research I found out that it's important to apply it the right way...bending over the sink and using the spray so it hits the entrance for the eustachian tubes. I'm also doing the valsalva manouver after using the spray in hopes that some gets into it.

Overall im in much better shape now than the first couple of weeks when I felt that this was a unliveable condition. I get to sleep by turning a fan on that blocks the sounds and it doesn't bother me that much (maybe 3/10 now, start was 6-7/10) during the day. I'm just trying to stay away from total silence and using the spray in hopes that this will be sorted out in some months). So the average day is much easier, but as soon as I start thinking too much about it, its weird because then the sound gets louder) so im trying to stay busy and staying away from too much googling.

 

Hello. I've now had tinnitus in my left ear for three years and counting. In the beginning I was hoping it would be gone each time I woke up, only to be greeted by the sound. I spent more time than that was good for me on google trying to find a cure or find out what was wrong with me, only increasing the panic and depression. Couldn't get to sleep, rolling around in bed until the morning hours when I finally caught some hours.

Went to my doctor, was about as useless as tits on a nun. Gave me the normal speech of there's nothing to do saying that it would be alright since he had tinnitus himself. Got sent to a ear specialists where they gave me a hearing test (missing some hearing in the higher frequencies) and told me the same thing my doctor told me. The only positive thing that came out of the doctor visits was that I was put on Seroquel (Quetiapine) for sleep. That stuff has been doing miracles for me, pop 50-75mg and within max two hours I'm gone. I spent some time before that playing around with normal sleeping pills and benzos, but as you all know they loose their effect after some weeks and you'll have to start upping the dose. And frankly I enjoyed them a bit too much so I cut it short.

As I wrote earlier, the first months going from march to early june was brutal. But then I finally got my sleep back and got sponsored a sound machine by the state, so now I sleep to rain sounds. Since then there has been ups and downs, at around the 1.5 year mark I was entering panick mode again since I thought the sound was getting worse for a couple weeks, but it went down to normal levels again. Currently I have perhaps 2-3 bad days a month where its hard to not think about it, but all in all my tinnitus no longer occupies my mind 24/7. Altho it will probably sound off worse than normal tonight since writing about it makes me focus on it as well. Is the sound there still? Oh yes, if I just listen to it it'll come back to 2017 levels without problem. But unlike back then it will go 'down in volume' after awhile instead of being a problem for days on days.

So in short if you recently got tinnitus, hopefully it will 'stop' being a problem after awhile. Only tip I can give is to not fuel the flames by trying to put a diagnosis on yourself by intensive google'ing and in general try to focus your attention on other things. Of course some has it worse than others and can't stop focusing because of the sheer intrusiveness of it. Best of luck to you all and hopefully they'll find a cure in the future that can give us peace in the ears.