New Changes

Hey guys,

I had T after a gunshot with no ear protection last November. It was in my right ear, and thankfully, went away. In January I got a month long head cold and the beginning of February I noticed I had a high pitched ringing in both ears. Doctor said it was probably Eustachian tube dysfunction. The next two months were hell, but eventually I got over it. I had 7 months of slight worrying, but overall I was fine. It was a high pitched ringing in both ears.

Fast forward to last weekend. I drove 4 hours to see my family. Friday night I went out and got piss faced drunk, I had about 10-12 beers in a friends basement. There was music playing and people talking, but it wasn't loud at all. I noticed in the middle of the of the night I went outside to grab something from my car and it was so quiet, like my ears were full of pressure. I dismissed it immediately. The next day my left ear acted funky but I thought nothing of it. Later that night I went to a bar (the first one in months) and I was there for not even 30 seconds before I dismissed it for being too loud and drove to my parents house.

The next day, on the drive home in the afternoon I noticed that both my ears were "screeching" in a sense. Like it's random up and down high pitches or like crickets in my ear. It's been almost a week, I've been to the doctor who gave me prednisone and chalked it up to a vitamin imbalance and said it would go away. Before I took the prednisone I went to the ENT who looked in my ears and said they were fine, and to keep using my flonase and to hold off on the prednisone (for anxiety).

Is this a temporary spike, should I take the prednisone? I was at such a happy point in life. I was growing accustomed to the tinnitus. Almost welcomed it! Now, I feel like the 6 months worth of work that I did is all for nothing. It's so incredibly hard to mask it when it sounds like crickets chirping and it's not a solid tone.

 

I would take the prednisone. Recall that the sooner you take it the more effective it is.

The rule of thumb is that the pill size ought to be X mg, where X is your weight in kilograms. Some doctors give one 10 mg of prednisone to be taken for 5 days, just to get one out of their hair...

 

Bill, I'm weary of taking the prednisone due to the anxiety that comes along with it. I've also read stories of it making peoples worse.

 

When I took 60 mg daily for 7 days, I didn't feel any big changes in my anxiety levels.

Check out
https://www.ehealthme.com/ds/prednisone/tinnitus/
The figure of 0.29% overestimates the true risk, as it doesn't take into account the total number of people who took prednisone (it focuses only on the group who reported getting side effects). Close to two thirds of people who reported getting T after taking prednisone took it for longer than a month.

 

Hmm. Unfortunately, I feel like the doctor just gave me these to get me off his back. He's been pushing these for awhile. Swore up and down it helped people. The ENT said take them, and then retracted her statement and said don't take them.

They're 20MG tablets that need to be taken twice a day.

 

I looked at it again. They're 20Mg tablets, twice a day, for 5 days.

Would this even be worth the risk associated with Prednisone?

 

Too bad it is not three times a day. But 40 mg a day is not insignificant. You can also go to the ER, lie that your T is spiking as a result of you having to turn off a screaming fire alarm, and get the doctor there to give you another 5-day supply of prednisone (tell the ER doctor that you need the prednisone to survive until the time when you get to see your ENT in 5 days).