Prednisone After 3 Weeks of Tinnitus, Any Hope?

Hi everyone, I'm new to this whole tinnitus thing, hoping do get some insight into what the heck could be going on with my ears.

My tinnitus started about 3 weeks ago, it began with sudden ear inflammation due to me being stupid by cleaning my ears with q-tips soaked in alcohol one week prior, I also created a really bad habit of watching YouTube videos with intra-auricular earbuds every night before sleep, so it was probably a combination of these two factors. It may be worth pointing out I have been using gaming headphones a lot last year almost every day at a moderate volume, so this might have had some influence as well.

Anyways immediately after the noise and pain started I went to an ENT that examined my ears and removed some wax that had been pushed deep inside, he prescribed some anti-inflammatory ear drops for 10 days and told me not to worry about the tinnitus as it would fade away on its own. I also did an audiometry test in the same clinic and it turned out fine, no hearing loss of any kind.

The ear drops did indeed help with the ear pain and inflammation, but the tinnitus remained and I can't really tell if it's gotten less loud or not.

After the 10 day period ended I had to wait until this week to get an appointment with another ENT since pretty much every doctor in my town were out on vacation for the holidays, I also wasn't home during this period so I couldn't really do anything but wait and try to ignore the noise.

So I finally went to a different ENT today (24 days after the tinnitus started), I told him everything I was going trough and did some quick exams, he then concluded my T was likely caused by Inflammation in the cochlea area and put me on 20mg of prednisone for 27 days (with gradually reduced dosages).

This got me quite a bit worried, especially knowing the side-effects of prednisone can cause glaucoma and cataracts wich are obviously way worse than what I have now.

I had been reading some threads on this forum for a while and from what I heard prednisone can only be effective if taken immediately after the T starts, so this makes me wonder, am I screwed since I only started taking prednisone almost a month after the tinnitus began? What about the side effects of this drug (mainly glaucoma and cataracts) should I be worried about that (I'm only 22)?

Does anyone know how long it takes for prednisone to take effect? I'm supposed to take 20mg pills every 8 hours for 7 days before tampering down.

 

Side effects are a no issue for a young healthy person - unless you have diabetes or an existing infection

Past 3 weeks isn't going to do much but again we don't know so I would still give it a try for a week just in case but thats just my opinion

 

I did two 10 day rounds of prednisone. One back in August and then again in October. Both times did not help my T. I'm going on 205 days of ear ringing.. nothing has helped.