Hello Everyone,
Before all this, the only time I had heard of tinnitus was when my 70 year old grandma once complained of her ears ringing. I was a 7 year old child back then and the best I could associate it to was like a door bell ring. Fast forward to June of 2017. One morning I woke up with ear fullness in my left ear. No pain at all, I did have hearing loss but I just figured it was due to the swelling closing off the inner ear. I did some research online and concluded that it was a viral infection and that nothing could really be done but to just wait it out. All other types of ear infections had severe pain associated with them. I have just about no pain, maybe once or twice a day I would feel this slight bit of pain for a second and then it would go away... 4 weeks go by and I sense that the swelling is going away and my hearing is improving. about a week later I was back to normal with no symptoms full hearing and no tinnitus.
About a week goes by where everything is normal and all of a sudden one morning I wake up with the ear fullness back! Again no pain but muffled hearing. Now I get scared and find an ENT. Of course the next appointment is in over a week but I accept it... In the course of the week, I distinctly remember EXACTLY when my tinnitus started. I'm talking about the second it started. I was going to bed with my ear pressed against the pillow and all of a sudden I hear the onset of a buzzing noise. I freak out and break into a sweat and do a bunch of research and there's nothing positive I find about it but I still have my ENT appointment so I hope the Dr. could help... My appointment comes and the Dr. could tell I was a mess from the stress and anxiety so he does a full checkup, hearing test, etc. Everything comes back normal. I still have the fullness in my ear and muffled hearing but my hearing test was normal with one frequency almost touching the 20db point but it was still within normal range. he looks at my sinuses and ears and tells me I most likely had viral labyrinthitis and that minor damage was done but nothing that could be picked up by the hearing test. He prescribed Prednisone and a course of antibiotics just in case. Several weeks go by and the swelling is gone and hearing is normal but the tinnitus is still there...
It has been just over a year now and I'm sitting here right now with some type of bacterial or viral infection of my throat with fever and I feel like the pain is going up to my right ear. I'm also taking ibuprofen for the fever and pain and antibiotics and my tinnitus has gone from a 4 to a 8. I know both ibuprofen and antibiotics affect hearing so I'm afraid my tinnitus is going to get even worse now but hopefully it's just temporary. I noticed that during a regular cold/flu, my tinnitus gets worse even when I take no meds then goes back to baseline when I get over it.
I've done a few things to cope with my tinnitus. In fact, about two months ago I was doing so good that I completely forgot about it. I know it was there but it was down to a 1 or 2 and I could only really notice it at night just before sleep. What seems to make my tinnitus worse the most is lack of sleep. If I don't get 8 hours, I wake up with noticeably loud tinnitus for the entire day. If I get really good sleep, I almost have no tinnitus or barely noticeable. Coffee or sugar seem to have change and my tinnitus is pretty much constant for a 24 hour period. So basically whatever I wake up with, I'm going to live with until the next morning. It never increases or decreases throughout the day. I also started exercising regularly and I found that it also helped probably reduced stress and inflammation and increased blood flow.
What brought me here today was a search I did about certain drugs and tinnitus. I've hit a string of bad luck with a workout injury that caused me to not be able to work out for several weeks. Then I got hit with a fungal ear infection due to swimming which I treated on my own with OTC antifungal meds and now for the past week I've had this throat infection with a fever which I'm afraid is going to affect my other ear. Hopefully the string of bad luck ends because it's really affecting my stress/anxiety levels and now I feel like I'm back to day one thinking about my tinnitus all day...
Things that temporarily reduce or eliminate my tinnitus are listening to a 3400 Hz frequency for about a minute. This pretty much stops my tinnitus for a minute or two so it's not too effective but sometimes even a couple minutes of silence a day helps a lot. Another thing that is actually more effective but takes more effort and people think you're crazy in public is the trick of putting your hands over your ears with finger towards the back of the head then snapping your index finger against your skull 20 or 30 times. When I do this, I get a solid 4 to 5 minutes of relief but like I said, it's a bit awkward doing this in public or in front of coworkers. For sleep, I have these padded sleep headphones that I use to play nature sounds like rain, river, camp fire. I find that the higher pitched sounds mask the tinnitus the best like the sound of a rainstorm.
For the new club members, all I can tell you is that given enough time, you will find ways to cope with it. With works for me may not work for you and what works for you may not work for me. I just suggest you do your research and use trial/error to find what works for you best.
Good luck everyone and sorry for the long read...
Before all this, the only time I had heard of tinnitus was when my 70 year old grandma once complained of her ears ringing. I was a 7 year old child back then and the best I could associate it to was like a door bell ring. Fast forward to June of 2017. One morning I woke up with ear fullness in my left ear. No pain at all, I did have hearing loss but I just figured it was due to the swelling closing off the inner ear. I did some research online and concluded that it was a viral infection and that nothing could really be done but to just wait it out. All other types of ear infections had severe pain associated with them. I have just about no pain, maybe once or twice a day I would feel this slight bit of pain for a second and then it would go away... 4 weeks go by and I sense that the swelling is going away and my hearing is improving. about a week later I was back to normal with no symptoms full hearing and no tinnitus.
About a week goes by where everything is normal and all of a sudden one morning I wake up with the ear fullness back! Again no pain but muffled hearing. Now I get scared and find an ENT. Of course the next appointment is in over a week but I accept it... In the course of the week, I distinctly remember EXACTLY when my tinnitus started. I'm talking about the second it started. I was going to bed with my ear pressed against the pillow and all of a sudden I hear the onset of a buzzing noise. I freak out and break into a sweat and do a bunch of research and there's nothing positive I find about it but I still have my ENT appointment so I hope the Dr. could help... My appointment comes and the Dr. could tell I was a mess from the stress and anxiety so he does a full checkup, hearing test, etc. Everything comes back normal. I still have the fullness in my ear and muffled hearing but my hearing test was normal with one frequency almost touching the 20db point but it was still within normal range. he looks at my sinuses and ears and tells me I most likely had viral labyrinthitis and that minor damage was done but nothing that could be picked up by the hearing test. He prescribed Prednisone and a course of antibiotics just in case. Several weeks go by and the swelling is gone and hearing is normal but the tinnitus is still there...
It has been just over a year now and I'm sitting here right now with some type of bacterial or viral infection of my throat with fever and I feel like the pain is going up to my right ear. I'm also taking ibuprofen for the fever and pain and antibiotics and my tinnitus has gone from a 4 to a 8. I know both ibuprofen and antibiotics affect hearing so I'm afraid my tinnitus is going to get even worse now but hopefully it's just temporary. I noticed that during a regular cold/flu, my tinnitus gets worse even when I take no meds then goes back to baseline when I get over it.
I've done a few things to cope with my tinnitus. In fact, about two months ago I was doing so good that I completely forgot about it. I know it was there but it was down to a 1 or 2 and I could only really notice it at night just before sleep. What seems to make my tinnitus worse the most is lack of sleep. If I don't get 8 hours, I wake up with noticeably loud tinnitus for the entire day. If I get really good sleep, I almost have no tinnitus or barely noticeable. Coffee or sugar seem to have change and my tinnitus is pretty much constant for a 24 hour period. So basically whatever I wake up with, I'm going to live with until the next morning. It never increases or decreases throughout the day. I also started exercising regularly and I found that it also helped probably reduced stress and inflammation and increased blood flow.
What brought me here today was a search I did about certain drugs and tinnitus. I've hit a string of bad luck with a workout injury that caused me to not be able to work out for several weeks. Then I got hit with a fungal ear infection due to swimming which I treated on my own with OTC antifungal meds and now for the past week I've had this throat infection with a fever which I'm afraid is going to affect my other ear. Hopefully the string of bad luck ends because it's really affecting my stress/anxiety levels and now I feel like I'm back to day one thinking about my tinnitus all day...
Things that temporarily reduce or eliminate my tinnitus are listening to a 3400 Hz frequency for about a minute. This pretty much stops my tinnitus for a minute or two so it's not too effective but sometimes even a couple minutes of silence a day helps a lot. Another thing that is actually more effective but takes more effort and people think you're crazy in public is the trick of putting your hands over your ears with finger towards the back of the head then snapping your index finger against your skull 20 or 30 times. When I do this, I get a solid 4 to 5 minutes of relief but like I said, it's a bit awkward doing this in public or in front of coworkers. For sleep, I have these padded sleep headphones that I use to play nature sounds like rain, river, camp fire. I find that the higher pitched sounds mask the tinnitus the best like the sound of a rainstorm.
For the new club members, all I can tell you is that given enough time, you will find ways to cope with it. With works for me may not work for you and what works for you may not work for me. I just suggest you do your research and use trial/error to find what works for you best.
Good luck everyone and sorry for the long read...
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