Now I Have Tinnitus in the Left Ear

Hi, I'm 66 years old and have had hearing loss and mild T in my right ear for probably 50 years which never bothered me much at all.

On January 5th of this year I had a hermia surgery and a week later I developed T in my left ear that is extremely loud.

I'm not sure if the surgery had any thing to to do with it or not but it my suspicion that it did.

The Dr. had me take an MRI and it showed an old ear infection and some blood vessels that looped in a strange fashion. I'm not sure what that means and I'll be seeing an ENT specialist in April. We'll see what happens.

 

Welcome to the forum @bonedaddy. Sorry to hear that your T has spiked. But it is nice to know you have had T for so long and yet you could carry on a normal life until the latest spike.

There are many causes which can trigger or aggravate tinnitus including but not limited to drug reaction or side-effects from ototoxic drugs, ear wax build-up, ear or Eustachian tube infection or ETD, ear drum injury, fluid build-up feeling pressured, TMJ, TTTS, high blood pressure or blood circulation problem, loud noise exposure, acoustic trauma/shock, head trauma & injury, neck injury or muscle problems, hearing loss, Meniere's, barotrauma from sudden change of air pressure such as flights, slapping of the ears, grief for the loss of loved ones, untreated sleep apnea, elevated stress, anxiety & panic disorder, etc.

Hope your condition will improve if the ENT can find out the problem with the ears. In the meantime, if you need to mask the T so you won't be so bothered by it, you may want to consider these. Take good care. God bless.

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: https://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.