New to Tinnitus — Having Difficulty

Hello Everyone,

I am a 39 yr old male with new onset tinnitus of unknown etiology. I first experienced it late last month after a swimming outing with my children. I am married and have an extensive ENT history.

About 2 yrs ago while on a business trip into Tampa, I experience altitude induced barotrauma to my right ear while in descent from my flight. It was a very scary experience and took a week to go away. I feel in retrospect that this was the beginning of the path that has led me here. I have an extremely stressful life. My job is in the transplant industry and I deal with death every day.

I have financial difficulties that are putting a strain on my marriage as well. I recently became a primary care giver for my aging grandparents who are no longer able to care for themselves in their home without assistance. I feel overwhelmed, and this is the last thing I needed. I felt a pop in my left ear while watching TV, followed by dampened hearing and a persistent high pitched ringing.

I went emergently to my ENT the following morning, where he said I had no fluid in my ears (even though it felt as though I did), and no evidence of infection. The audiology exam did show that I had high-tone hearing loss in my left ear. He prescribed me with prednisone to take every day for a week and my symptoms have not improved. The right side of my neck has also been hurting, but comes and goes. This past weekend, my right ear filled up with air while I was working. I got syncopal, and felt like I was going to collapse. I went to the ER, where they drew blood and found normal lab results. They performed a CT of my head and found nothing. I do have HTN, but I was removed from my lisinopril when my blood pressure came back into normal range.

My wife is acting like I am a hypochondriac, but this high pitched whine in my ears is driving my crazy. I can't sleep, so my DR prescribed my with Ambien 10mg which leaves me feeling like a zombie. The only thing that seems to help is Xanax, but again leaves me zombified. I can't sleep and feel like I'm slipping into a depression. My anxiety is off the charts.

I have an appointment tomorrow at which time I feel I need to demand to have an MRI to get some kind of resolution.... I am vexed... Thank you all for listening.

 

Welcome to the forum @Guest9201 76i. Here members understand your suffering, for most have been where you are now. Not taking away the degree of severity of your situation, your suffering is quite typical of a new T sufferer. If you read enough of the success stories, you will find this initial suffering is the worst, and is indeed a part of the journey of T even for those who have done better. I know from my experience how hard it was. I had ultra high pitch dog whistle T plus severe hyperacusis on top of it. I was in a mess daily initially and had to depend on meds to survive too. I never thought I would recover and have good days again. But today I live a normal and absolutely enjoyable life despite T. If you don't mind reading my story and those of others, here is the link to mine and also to the most read success story on TT by IWLM. So don't panic and despair. It will get better. Take good care. God bless your recovery.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/from-darkness-to-light-how-i-recovered-from-tinnitus-hyperacusis.3148/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/back-to-silence.7172/

By the way, for really high pitch T, it is best to try to mask it initially. If you haven't done so, here are some suggestions:

1) Mask at bed time so you can sleep better. Find whatever sounds/music that are soothing to you. You can use a sound machine or sound pillow for this, or a computer with speakers.

2) If you need masking on the go, try load an ipod with nature sounds or music using itune. If you have a smart phone, you can download free APPs for soothing or T-masking sounds.

3) If you have computer and speakers, you can try these excellent masking sounds too:

TT's audio player: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/audioplayer/

or this online sound library, particularly the self-mix nature sounds: http://mynoise.net/

or download free sound generator ‘aire freshener’: http://www.peterhirschberg.com/mysoftware.html

or search youtube with words like 'tinnitus masking sounds', 'white noise', 'rain sound' etc.