Please Help I'm Losing It

Hello,

Saturday night I went to the club and went home with damp and ringing ears. My ears got clear in the morning but the ringing stayed. It's been 5 days now and the ringing in my right ear has stopped but it's still going on in the left. I can hear a background noise in my brain and the ringing in my left ear. I can only hear it when it's silent (cover my ears, sleeping or quiet room, or if I focus on it too much). Tonight I felt really really horrible, I know I'm being ungrateful but I don't know how to deal with this. I generally take care of myself, so getting this is really hitting me. I know I have to get my mind off of it but I can't. I'm hoping it is temporary because the right ear healed but I am giving up. I have been checking every 10 minutes if the sound is still there.

Could this still go away since it was caused by loud noise exposure? It has been 5 days, isn't that enough to heal it? Or would it need more time?

 

Depending of you damaged your ear, it might stay. Try to protect your ears from further damage, wear ear plugs in noisy places.

Also, seems that the more you concentrate on it, the higher your anxiety gets, the more you'll hear it, and so on.. Try to relax, hopefully it'll go away. It may take time.

 

Hey my friend. I'm sorry to read of your suffering, having gone through it myself indeed only very recently in similar circumstances. I know what you're going through. Rest assured your circumstances will improve but it's going to take a while. You will have to give yourself some slack in the meantime. Go easy on yourself if you're not feeling great right now.

The two priorities you want to strengthen right now are 'Stress reduction/Anxiety reduction' and 'Sleep'. Give your body time to heal. Try to load up on antioxidants with healthy eating and get good moderate exercise outdoors. 5 days is early. Not even a month ago I was like you are now. I can tell you in truth I feel a lot better now than I did then, and so will you in time.

 

It could go away since it's very early. Even if it doesn't, your T sounds very mild, so you'll probably feel better in a few months, trust me. I have a hissing in my ear that I hear in silent rooms, I've had this for weeks, and I feel a lot better. The only reason I'm annoyed by T is because I've recently developed a sudden reactive T, which is something that you'll most likely not get.

 

So do you think there might be a chance that it will get better? Or that I will habituate to it easier?

How did your T happen, if you don't mind me asking.

I don't know how to deal with the anxiety. I went to an audiologist and she said my hearing is fine and no ear wax or anything and told me that it should take about a week to heal but I feel like it's getting worse. Or maybe it is becuase i have been focusing too much on it.

Can I go to the gym? There is fairly loud music there, or should I stay away from it for a bit

 

How do you know what level your T is?

Lately I have also been feeling that the ear that is ringing feels heavy

 

Definitely stay away from the loud music at the gym for a while but do continue exercising where is quiet or very soft music.

 

Hello Jaw yas

Your case sounds familiar. Been there exactly 3 months ago and know the desperate feeling, so I felt I should respond to your post.

In my case the background was the same. Had always taken very well care of my ears until I attended a wedding with super loud music all over the place and no chance to hide. Went to bed with ringing in my ears and woke up with again. That's where to panic set in. In my case the main symptoms (ringing, loud T especially in the left ear, swollen feeling in my ear channel and disorientation) took about two weeks before they started improving. So that's about the period of time which was really traumatical for me.

My advice as a rookie

• See the doctor. They will most likely give you cortisone (seems to be a common first step)
• Stay away from any loud places for at least 2-3 weeks after the event (this includes pubs, rail tracks, concert halls as well as loud sports e.g. squash).
• However, do NOT isolate/over-protect your ears i.e. do not wear ear plugs (this would increase the focus on your T)
• Listen to low-volume music to mask the T during the day. Best with solid quality ear phones. This helped me to get my mind of it. (The advice to "just ignore it" was given to me too and felt absolutely useless).
• Do sports daily to stimulate the oxygen balance in your blood (That was an advice from my doctor. Not sure if that helps, but it certainly won't hurt).
• Do not read all the horror stories on the internet. With your background, you should have very good chances to get rid of the symptoms completely or at least for a major improvement over time.

Regarding my own situation, I would that it has improved by 90% since the event and is still improving. There are good days like today, where I have 98% silence, and there are worse days where it becomes more present again. But the number of the latter is decreasing. Slowly, but steadily.

Either way, be assured that you will experience much improvement over time. But time is what it needs. In this regard, I second the statement of @Raab .

Hope this helps

 

Thank you very much for the reply. I will try to follow your steps but it is really hard since I'm a university student and exams are a month away.

You said it improved 90%, do you mean that you habituated to it or the volume of T is fading and going away?

I'm also gonna start taking NAC tablets, apparently it helped for a few people on here, so might as well give it a try, or would u advice against that?

Thank you!

 

Went to a walk in clinic and the doctor said if I didn't get a vertigo or had hearing loss that my ringing is temporary and should go away once it heals, he said its mostly likely due to the loud noise exposure of being to close to the speakers, I guess that's a bit reassuring? But how much of it is true.

He gave me a nasal spray: fluticasone propionate and Option+ extra strength sinus medication day and night contains acetaminophen, pseudoephedrine hydrochloride and doxylamine succinate (I read that any type of advil/aspirin is bad for you, so would this make the ringing worse? Or is that only in cases where people develop T through meds?)

 

I have been sitting in my room without any noise and experienced a spike in my right ear (which doesnt make any noise). Is that normal? This noise is killing me and I am starting to think this is permanent, as much as I wanna hope it is due to the noise exposure and should go away in a bit I am losing hope.

 

Yea I get spikes.. My left ear wasn't really ringing all day and now it is, but tends to come and go. Last night I kept waking up to the noise coming and going sorts thing. I'm also still hopeful that it will resolve itself.

Maybe it would be best for you to go to your doctor and get something for anxiety. The more you relax, the better. The more anxious and scared you are the worse it is...

That said, I wanna say this: my father also has tinnitus. He was working in a tunnel running a loader I think when they warning siren went off which he didn't hear, and they set off explosives to blast rock in the tunnel with him still in it. He has hearing loss and tinnitus that he describes as between 7 to 8 out of 10, all day sort of thing. That was 25 years ago, and he habituated long ago, and refuses to wear those hearing devices that masks the tinnitus because he "feels too young yet to wear those things" lol.

I'm two weeks into tinnitus and I hope that it will resolve itself yet, hopefully sooner than later.
But I would say get some ativan or something to help with the anxiety.

 

It's best to avoid silence. Have something on in the background - a fan, some music something.

It's way too soon to know whether it is permanent. It's hard to do, but the best thing to do is try to relax. Get sleep, avoid loud noise, etc.

 

By improved I mean that the volume of T has gone down significantly since the event. So by now, quiet places are usually not an issue. The main concern in my case is that the perception is depending on outside noises. As I learned here in the forum, I have had a "reactive T" which is stimulated by high frequency sounds. However, I think this is specific for my case.

I have not heard of those NAC tablets before. Will look into it. Currently I am taking "Tebokan" (I think the brand name may vary by region) twice a day. That's it for the moment.

 

NAC, as in something like this?
http://www.amazon.com/Source-Naturals-N-Acetyl-Cysteine-Tablets/dp/B000GFJJZ6?tag=duckduckgo-d-20

 

How old were you when this happened?

 

Yes!

 

I was/am 29