New Tinnitus Here... Need Advice to Keep It Mild

Hi, I'm new to the forums here. I'm a bit new to T as well, I'm about 4 weeks in. I believe I got my T from an ear infection from swimming. I went swimming one day with some friends and my right ear got clogged for two days. It ended up going away on it's own so I did not think much of it. I went swimming again and my ear got clogged again and this time it did not fully drain. My ear periodically feels plugged, sometimes I have noticeably mild hearing loss in my right ear sometimes I don't. I'm almost certain I have some sort of ear infection, whenever I burp I feel something with the fluids is moving in my right ear (I'm sorry that I'm doing a poor job describing the infection I just don't know how to put the oozy feeling in my ear into words).

I do have a constant 24/7 T as a result of this infection. From a scale of 0 to 10 is severity I'd say it is a 3 when everything is completely quiet and I'm just sitting there stressing out about it, and a 1 throughout the day when I'm not focused on it and it is being masked by another sound.

While I'm presume the ear the infection will go away with medication and time, from reading these forums it sounds like T part is permanent and my goal is to keep it as mild as possible and prevent it from becoming severe. I'm seeing a GP in a few days and I want to ensure it doesn't get worse (read someones story on how a simple auditory test made their T go from mild to severe).

Any advice on what to do or what not to do would be appreciated!

 

Welcome to TT. Something similar is happening with my T ear. Some days i wake up the ear is blocked and then will unblock a day or so later. Its happened 3 times since late October. Not sure if the cold weather is affecting it as my nose feels stuffy when it happens.

Anyway, see what your gp says and in the meantime avoid loud sounds.

 

Hi @RyaG and welcome. An ear infection can cause tinnitus but it can take a while for it to clear up. From a few weeks and up to three months. Just because you have tinnitus at the moment doesn't mean that it is permanent. The advice @Sam Bridge has given you I agree with. Also, I don't recommend you listen to music through headphones, even at low volume.

Try to avoid quiet rooms and surroundings especially at night, as the tinnitus will seem to be more intrusive. Use a sound machine or music played at a low level for "sound enrichment". It isn't a good idea to mask or try to cover up the tinnitus with sound enrichment as you won't succeed and will probably make you feel more stressed. Click on the link below and read the information about tinnitus which you might find helpful. It was written for people that are new to tinnitus.

All the best
Michael

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/tinnitus-a-personal-view.18668/

 

It looks like it was ear wax that was causing my T. The PA sucked it out and about 90% of my T is gone, the sound is very faint and I have to be completely alone to focus on hearing it now. My ear is hypersensitive to noise now as I couldn't hear well out of it for a month and it got unclogged all at once

 

Nice one

I remember leaving the doctors after getting my ears syringed to remove ear wax and the rattle of my keys sounded so loud. I suppose it was a case of hyperacusis as my ears were so blocked with wax at the time but it only lasted a day or two and then everything went back too normal. I just thought it was HD hearing at the time.