New to Tinnitus

Hi!
I have been reading this forum for the last month and a half and I though it was time to introduce myself.

First of all, thanks for this forum. It is a daily source of knowledge on a topic so little known in medicine.

I am Matteo, a 28 yo guy from Italy even tough now I've been living in Norway for the last two years.

My journey with T started last March when I attended a concert without earplugs. The next day I started to ear a mild hiss in both ears, louder in the left one.

After few days without improvement I went to the ER of the city where I live and a doctor told me that I had developed T but I should have not worried about it because it would have faded away within a month. My GP told me more or less the same and prescribed me just multivitamin supplements.

After that, I kind of calmed down about T and things were starting to get better and I probably made one of the worst mistake of my life. Some colleagues invited me to a bar for taking a beer and I accepted the invitation. The bar had some background music and the total level of noise was < 80db (measured with a mobile app) and I stayed there 2 hrs. How stupid I was...

As a consequence of that, T increased in loudness and I got a drone sound in the left ears which fortunately is very low and I can only ear at night. I started to have problems sleeping at night and I took melatonin for some weeks and T started to go up and down in volume. I developed symptoms common to most of the people here such as H and ear fullness.

I finally saw an ENT after 7 weeks since the first T onset and he prescribed me Deflazacort for 10 days which did not have any effect unfortunately.

I am currently taking supplements of Magnesium, vitamin B and ginkgo biloba under prescription of the same ENT. I have noticed that my T reacts to noise and settles down to its normal level after the noise is gone. Normally when I wake up in the morning I can barely ear it in my right ear (which is less damaged one) and gradually it builds up when I start my day. A couple of times I woke up at night and T was so soft that I had to concentrate to ear it.

As most of the people in the beginning of T I feel hopeless and depressed and really scared that I would unconsciously aggravate T even more. I bough good earplugs to use in presence of noise (ETY ER20, Alpine MusicSafe Pro, and Flare audio) but even when I use them I can ear T increasing in volume. I have pretty much accepted the fact that I am done with concerts and loud clubs but I don't accept that even gathering with my friends can became a nightmare. Last weekend I went to a cabin trip to celebrate a friend's birthday and the mix of background music (which was low) and people talking would flare up T even though I was using earplugs all the time.

Yesterday night T suddenly increased with apparently no reason and today I am experiencing again ear fullness and pain like the first month. I really do hope that things will improve or at least stabilise because this is no living...

 

I highly recomend you go to your doctor or ENT and see if theres any sort of wax buildup in your ear cannal! Some of the symptoms you are mentioning really sound like something is affecting your ear drum and distorting the sounds that go in it (like mine, My T is caused by wax/ years of headphone abuse). I hope my suggestion gives you some peace of mind and somewhere to go from here. Never forget that youre not alone in this journey, and that this forum is an amazing coping mechanism. I also recommend going to a psychologist or a mental health specialist in order to cope and have another person you can talk to thats studied emotions and emotional patterns for years!

Good luck! I hope everything gets better for you!

 

@Abs Thanks for your kind words When I went to the ENT he told me that my ear canal looked clean from wax. Anyway I need to go to my GP soon for other reasons and I will ask him to double check.
I know I am not alone in this, and there are people of this this forum who are worst symptoms than me. I will definitely look for some mental help, it is so easy to freak out and people around me don't really understand what I am going though.
By the way, I forgot to mention before, no matter how bad is my T, I can easily mask it with cricket sound from this website https://www.noisli.com. I sometime use it to sleep. Maybe it will be useful for someone else who reads my post.