History of Loud Music and Ear Infections: Now Have Tinnitus, Fluid in Ear, and Feeling of Fullness

I am so happy to see a forum for this!

A little background information... I had a substantial amount of severe ear infections as a child in my right ear. In fact, I had so many that my primary care physician told me a couple of months ago that my ear drum is heavily scarred as a result.

Well fast forward to my teenage years and into my 20s (I'm 28 now). I suppose I haven't been too kind to my ears with regards to exposing them to loud music. Specifically, my right ear being exposed to the right speaker in my car since getting my license at 16 .

Probably around September of this year, I noticed a morse code type of noise in my right ear when I woke up one morning. I heard that until about the beginning of December. My doctor told me not only is my eardrum scarred, but I have fluid behind it which could be causing inflammation.

Well about 2 weeks ago, I began to hear a high pitched continuous tone in that ear, and the morse code has mostly faded, but I can still hear it "behind" the ringing.

My ear feels a little full, but I can hear fine with it, and I recently felt slight pressure pain while I was at work a couple of days ago.

It is also important that I note about a week before hearing the morse code, I had severe jaw pain where it meets my skull when chewing on my right side that lasted only a day or two. Could that have been the cause? It was a pain that I had never felt before in my jaw joint.

At this point, I'm just worried that this will get worse. I can deal with it now because I can only hear it in silent rooms. It's just scary to think this might be permanent. I have an appointment with the ENT in January so.

Thanks everyone in advance. I just ranted!

 

Something usually causes tinnitus and the most common is exposure to loud noise. If your tinnitus is noise induced and you want this to improve, then I advise that you do the following: stop listening to loud music. If you are a regular user of headphones, earbuds or headset, stop using them even at low volumes.

Hope all goes well at your ENT appointment.
Michael

 

Welcome to the forum!

Sorry to hear you're getting these problems. You've probably worked out that you should rest your ears as much as possible, and there's a good chance you will be able to get on with living your life. I don't have much history of ear infections, but I have also experienced bruxism/teeth grinding coupled with loud music. These sound systems really should come with prominent health warnings. Take your time and look through these forums and learn what you can. You will often see conflicting advice on a topic and we can get a little passionate about defending our points of view. But we are all fellow-travellers in this issue and are all here to help each other.

Best of luck with your appointments and let us know how you get on!

 

Hey there, sorry to hear this is happening to you.

You'll find that in a lot of cases, no one can really be sure if things are permenant or not. It's scary, and absolutely nerve-wracking, but I'd advise you try your best to take it one step at a time! Personally, I've been experiencing all of this for about 4 weeks now, caused by an ear infection. Things have improved steadily, but I'm still at the stage when I can hear it in quiet rooms.

The fluid behind your eardrum, and the scarring of the eardrum itself can absolutely cause the ringing your experiencing - and if so, you just have to leave it to time for the fluid to drain and for the scarring to heal. Timescales can be uncertain in this regard, so a lot of people here will advise you not to count the days and keep track of how long you've been experiencing the ringing because it isn't productive - it'll just put you in a really bad emotional place.

I'd advise you hold on until you see your ENT and wait to see what happens. Things should start to steadily improve, and with some luck, it might even fade entirely. Feel free to message me if you need someone to talk to, though I'm trying to limit how active I am here.

 

Thank you everyone for your feedback! I’m sure that my case is minor compared to what some of you are dealing with.