New Tinnitus in Second Ear

Hi there All

I have posted before about my 24 year old son’s severe and distressing somatosensory tinnitus, which began after a weight lifting incident which seemed to damage his jaw/neck, and have been very grateful for all the support.

Nothing has helped although I believe that most of the time it does not dominate his hearing as much as it did.
However today, after showering, he suddenly developed incredibly loud tinnitus in his other ear. He says it is as loud as when he had the original injury , 20 months ago. Knowing how devastating that was, I am stunned this has happened again. It has been a very rocky road and he has had a very hard time, unable to find medical people to support and understand. Now I do not know where to turn and I wonder if anyone might have any words of help that I may pass onto him please?

I am so concerned about him.

The only thing that is different is he has a little raised gland behind his right ear, the side of the new sound.

Many thanks to you all.

 

Just dredging my memory... should our son get prednisone or hyperbaric oxygen sessions? What would you advise ?? He was discharged by the ENT department after MRIs and a full check of his hearing, which was fine. So we are not under anyone’s care for it at all.

 

My T also spread from my bad ear that was subject to an acoustic trauma to my good ear. This happened around 10 months after onset. It might have been caused by a new (minor) acoustic trauma.

Check out the thread below where I summarize everything (24 tips spread over three posts) I learned about managing tinnitus after reading the posts on this forum for the past 11 months
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...itus-recently-this-info-will-be-useful.25741/

Perhaps some of the information there might be useful for your son...

 

Thank you very much Bill. I appreciated the hug too - I'm rather in shock myself that it's happening again. I'll look through your list to see what we can do.

 

@brummygirl this happened to me but after one month it's fading in the previously "good" ear

 

@Agrajag364 thats really encouraging to hear. Have you any suspicions as to what promoted it to appear? And have you done anything in particular to help it go?

 

It's hard to know what will happen to your son. I actually had two new sounds happen around 8 or so days ago which was very distressing. I sincerely prayed about it and yesterday they were gone.

It's hard to say what will happen but if you can afford it, perhaps take him to a doctor asap in case something like prednisone might help. Perhaps later a Neurotologist. I hope he gets better. Some people that get new sounds have them go away within days or weeks of getting them so hopefully that will be the case with your son.

 

i would suggest he try to get some sleep. I do experience moments of fleeting T and there was one time I got it extremely loud in my left ear. Normally the sound would go away after a few seconds but this time it didnt. I wasnt getting alot of sleep at the time due to work which i feel contributed to it. i laid in bed that nite and prayed to fall asleep. When i awoke the sound disappeared. Tell your son to hang on tight. In most cases members on this forum always say that when there is a spike there is a very good chance it will return to its base. It may not happen right away but eventually it will. Praying for him. Also has he seen a dentist? Since the cause was clenching his jaw it could be possibly TMJ.

 

@brummygirl The gland or lymph nodes that you are referring to are the posterior auricular nodes. There's many things that that cause them to swell, but when one has tinnitus it's often related to sinus. Heat from a shower can aggravate this. I doubt that this has anything to do with this ear starting to ring, unless it was PT.

What does has to do with the other ear starting to ring is the masseter muscle and this fits in with jaw extension. This just could be your son's problem. He could have masseter hypertrophy. I would look into this. Botox is a treatment for this. Radiofrequency is also used with some success.

 

@JasonP Thanks for your reply and good wishes. I'm really pleased that your new sounds have gone. My son just woke and I was so willing his new sound to have gone, but it hasn't. I tried our usual doctors' practice to try and get some prednisone last night, but he refused, saying he wasn't comfortable with prescribing it. So I am trying another doctor today. May I ask what a neurotologist does in your country? I'm not sure what the equivalent would be in the UK?

@Jomo yes, I agree sleep can make a big difference. However, my son does not have any restrictions on his sleeping times, so amount of sleep is only limited by the tinnitus waking him.
I am really glad that your spike disappeared though...what a relief! And thank you very much for your prayers.
He has been seeing a specialist dentist for his TMJ and clenching actually. He wears a splint to bring the jaw down and forward. We spoke yesterday and the dentist said to leave it off for a few days in case it was the cause. I am wondering about following the TMJ route again too. We saw a TMJ specialist who administered Botox when the tinnitus first started. It didn't make any difference, but I am wondering about trying another TMJ specialist just to see.

Thank you both for your encouraging words.
Kindest regards
Shirley

 

@Greg Sacramento Hi Greg and many thanks for replying. Thank you for explaining what the enlarged node could be. It has been like that for a few weeks, but I thought it might be worth mentioning.

I am going to look into the masseter muscle now. What sort of Doctor would be interested in helping with this, do you think ??

Kind regards
Shirley

 

Quick update: Spoke to helpful doctor and he is letting us have some steroids. Even if they don't work, at least we will know that we tried !

 

sounds good...make sure when he sleeps that you play some white noise or somthing to mask the T so he can get some deep sleep...i am sure you guys probably do this already but you mentioned he wakes up which i can tell you i dont get that at all....steam sounds work very well for me..need any tips let me know

 

According to Wikipedia:
Neurotology or neuro-otology is a branch of clinical medicine which studies and treats neurological disorders of the ear.[1] It is a subspecialty of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery, and is closely related to otology, and also draws on the fields of neurology and neurosurgery. Otology generally refers to the treatment of middle ear disease and resultant conductive hearing loss, whereas neurotology refers to treatment of inner ear conditions, or hearing and balance disorders. These specialists also work with audiologists and related sensory specialists.

I have never been before but they seem to be more specialized that ENT. The reason I mention it is that it says it is a subspeciality of otorlaryngology which is head and neck surgery since you said your son got tinnitus after damage to his neck and jaw along with the fact that they specialize with the ear. Unfortunately, I don't know much about them other than what I have read since I have never been to one.

 

@brummygirl The nodes need to be examined by a MD. Treatment may be needed and if so, it should start as soon as possible. I would call his GP, but you would need to tell the person making the appointment that your son needs to seen today.

For his other treatment, I would see a pain specialist MD. I had mentioned seeing a sports MD earlier this year, but a good pain MD would be better since his dental connection seems to be part of the central auditory brain complex. No alarm with this, better than having hearing loss. Pain doctors also work with chosen specialized dentists and physical therapy doctors.

 

Hi

Well, we are one week after the appearance of a new loud tone in my son's other previously quiet ear. I believe that the spike has reduced after that first day - hooray! He did take steroids, but my son doesn't feel that they caused the sound reduction, as I think the spike started reducing before the drugs would have worked.

@Jomo We have adjusted the background noise in the bedroom so that it stays on all night. It had been cutting out at 4 hours and this is definitely helpful. Thanks for your tip.

@JasonP Thank you for the info on neurolotology. I am now going to research into this area.

@Greg Sacramento Thank you for all your help along the way. Unfortunately our son has not felt well enough to get the node seen to as yet. However, I think he is improving and we have discussed getting a real good MOT. He has some other symptoms which I think should also be seen, but as always it is getting to see the right person. Although a gp would be a good start I think.
We did try to see a sports md. They are not too common around here and a swathe of them come under the osteopathic/slightly alternative umbrella here rather than the national health service. We got an appointment with a local sports md, who has a great reputation - she used to be sports doc for one of the national football teams. But she rang on the day of the appointment to say she didn't have the experience to help with deep neck problems. She referred us to a more experienced visiting sports md and we have been unable to get an appointment with him yet. And so it goes on...but I will now follow that route up again. I also looked at pain doctors in detail but couldn't find one to quite fit the bill.
I think I rather ran out of steam with hitting so many deadends. Lazily, I was hoping that the dental treatment plus jaw physio might do the trick.
Back to google I think.