Hi Everyone! Three Months with Tinnitus and Confusion About Its Origin

Hi Tinnitus Talk,

I’ve been dealing with mild unilateral tinnitus for nearly 3 months now. I first noticed it after jogging. I had heard of tinnitus, but I decided on the trip home to look up tinnitus and its symptoms. “Man” I thought to myself, “That would be really bad if I had that.” Dramatic irony I guess. I noticed that it’s two sounds in my right ear: a high-pitched buzzing noise (almost like a shower being turned on in a nearby room) and a strange “glitchy” like buzzing that is very sporadic and repeats in 3-4 second bursts. I’m incredibly thankful that I can only really hear them in quiet rooms and in somewhat quiet rooms if I’m searching for it, but it’s still very annoying and something that I focus way too much over.

I was terrified for the first few weeks and lost a lot a sleep. A history of anxiety didn’t help. I was worried that it was noise-induced hearing loss. I listen to music and podcasts constantly with earbuds, probably about 6-8 hours a day. I don’t go over the little warning that the newer Android phones have. Since then I've been limiting my time and volume with headphones and I bought a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. I also had a double ear infection about a year ago and the audiologist back then told me I had minor hearing loss. I got another audiogram a week after onset of symptoms and it turned out that I didn’t have any hearing loss, just a 20db dip in my right ear at 6khz - not even mild hearing loss.

Since then, I’ve seen a few ENTs (who didn’t really help much) and an ENT nurse practioner. The NP thought it was TMJ. She told me she could tell because when she poked at my TM joint, it was very sore and painful. I’m thinking that this could be related to my chronic neck and shoulder pain from poor posture and muscle imbalance. I’m meeting with a dentist pretty soon, so I hope they can help me. I really hope that this isn't permanent. For me, it’s the confusion and lack of a definite answer that aggravates and scares me the most. Anyone else deal with something like this? Any advice?


Thanks,
Tilts

 

Welcome to the forum. Sometimes members are lucky that their T is traceable to a medical condition. Once the root cause is fixed, then it is a good chance for T to fade. So if your root cause is from ETD, then once your ENT fixes the ETD, then hopefully that you will get better.

 

http://hyperacusisfocus.org/innerear/#hiddenloss

I'm certain hearing loss plays a role, there audiograms are well documented to be inaccurate, people always have more hearing loss then the test show.

 

My advice would be to go down the diagnosis path. You can use the following flowchart to guide your investigations (with your doctors):
https://www.tinnitusresearch.net/images/files/migrated/TRI_Tinnitus_Flowchart.pdf

Good luck!