Repeated Modified Nerve Blocks and Auditory and Non-Auditory Nerve Stimulation

I agree. I mean, if someone told me guaranteed 150% tinnitus would go away if I was lobotomized I'd say, okay let's go! Hahaha.

I did a clinical trial with a shot in my eardrum and it was 50/50 chance I'd get any improvement. If tinnitus is severe enough, there's a lot we are willing to do to get relief.

 

I suppose everyone's tinnitus and how we deal with it is different. My tinnitus developed a decade ago and was initially pretty quiet, so I've gotten more time to habituate to its ever increasing volume I suppose.

There's just so much more I would try in six months before going all the way to Korea for a dubious treatment. But I am not judging you by any means, if you felt you had to do this then so be it I guess. We're all caught up in a fucked up situation trying to survive somehow. Let's just hope the medical world hurries the hell up and makes a legit treatment widely available soon.

 

I really can't tell you either way to go or what it will do. Ototoxicity was one of the reasons they said it might not work.

Based off my results and the other guys' results it's a gamble. I don't think the money I spent was worth the reduction I got, but again I don't have the head hiss anymore.

I almost hope this is natural improvement and the treatment did nothing, but that seems unlikely since it did fluctuate a lot more than usual during treatment.

 

I actually have that centralized type of tinnitus.

Sometimes it goes softly to the ears but comes back. I'm also on a benzo so I wonder if is from that.

How did you get it and how did you get rid of it?

 

I got it from sitting near a computer fan for 45 minutes. The fan was annoying, I measured the dB at 55 and thought it couldn't do harm. That evening I experienced for the first time what severe tinnitus really is about. The spike lasted around 4 weeks and left me with Morse code tinnitus in my right ear (I already acquired Morse code tinnitus in my left ear after having a cavity drilled at the dentist). This happened in January, 6 months ago.

After that I realized I cannot be near fans or air conditioning. Being in a room with air conditioning (even measuring at 40 dB max) gives me severe spikes that last 5-7 days easily. I cannot go to hospitals, doctor's office or anything that has an AC/HVAC on without proper protection.

 

It's left ear only and it's constant. My best description is it fluctuates between hissing (pitch can vary a little) and an electrical short circuit sound.

 

Onset 09/2021? Acute and not chronic then. I'd say there is still hope that it will subside or that you find a way of accepting it better.

 

Seems quite similar to mine. Mine is also reactive. I am treating it with pink noise for a month now. Still too early to say but I have a feeling that it gets thinner and thinner.

 

Noise of any kind doesn't irritate your tinnitus further?

 

It was a big struggle to get going with the sound generators but I think it is slowly improving. Mine is reactive to all types of fans, frying pans etc.

I think I improved 5-10 dB in a month in tolerance.

 

SEOUL STIMULATION/NERVE BLOCKS TREATMENT – FIRST REPORT

I am in Seoul doing the stimulation/nerve blocks treatment. I haven’t announced it before because it has been a very difficult trip for me and, given my catastrophic tinnitus, it is important that I stay as calm as possible during this treatment. This trip is an absolute ordeal for me. I travelled a lot over the years, pre-tinnitus. Ironically, I had been to most Asian countries except South Korea. Normally, I would enjoy this cultural experience. However, with this catastrophic tinnitus I need to push through every hour, and in a foreign country without any previous exposure I am alone in pure survival mode. Despite this, as I always benefited from comments of people who went before me, like @BrysonKingMe and @bikerbandito, I would like to offer some information in turn, for people who are considering this treatment in the future. I have started the treatment, but I don’t want to say much on how I’m feeling, because it’s very early days and early impressions can be misleading. I think that for very severe cases like me we need to wait at least session 12-15 to offer comments. I had three sessions so far.

The flight was tough, very tough. I put Peltors on and tried to drug myself to sleep. I managed mostly, but the Peltors gave me jaw and head pain with their prolonged use (from London it is a 12h flight and I had to use them also on bus and tube previously).

Some info on logistics. As I had spiked after the first COVID-19 vaccination, I obtained an NHS exemption from vaccine and quarantine. Many phone calls to South Korean consulates, offices, web pages, etc told me that I had to quarantine one week, not having double vaccine. I resigned myself to that and to wasting one week and a bunch of money but as I landed, they let me through by looking at the NHS exemption. So, I found myself on Saturday night without a hotel as my Airbnb would start one week later. I booked a random hotel and texted the clinic, they immediately replied, even if it was the weekend, and told me it was ok to squeeze me in early the week after, so not to waste one week. I also bought a Korean SIM card with unlimited data and some minutes of calls, this is useful for a number of reasons. You can use also the SIM as a hotspot for your laptop, although Wifi is available almost everywhere. It is very helpful to have a dual SIM phone. Most mobiles now have an electronic sim and a slot for a physical sim, which I used for the Korean SIM.

Also, if you need to bring in benzodiazepines, and possibly other restricted medications, you need a permit of the narcotics office, as Bryson mentioned above, narcotics@korea.kr. This is a long process, and you should apply by email at least 10-14 days in advance, have a prescription showing the amount of medication, and a letter from the doctor explaining the diagnosis. Also, you need to fill two forms. It was an absolute nightmare for me, very bureaucratic, I had to ask my GP to reword the letter twice, but eventually I got the permit. However, no one checked anything at the airport.

Once you land, you need to do a PCR test before 48 hours. Go to a public health center, there is one in every district. The test is free. I had gone to a private hospital near my hotel and they would have charged 100$, and then it would also be more complicated to get it into the immigration records.

Another point: so far, I found very few people speaking English in Seoul, very very few. So, download Google Lens and keep Google Translate open, they are absolute life-savers.

The metro is excellent in Seoul, it goes basically everywhere, and it is relatively cheap compared, for example, to London. You can buy a metro card at stations. The metro is also relatively silent compared to London’s for example, but I still wear Peltors.

The two doctors, Dr. Heon Man Sirh and Dr. Soo-Ji Sirh, are really caring, kind and very welcoming. Soo-Ji is a neuro-surgeon and talks to patients at length, answers all questions, helps with all sorts of problems, and works hard to accommodate schedules. Soo-Ji has been very kind and helpful to me on many occasions. Dr. Heon Man Sirh, is an anesthesiologist and has published a book on the use of needles in medicine (together with a few journal publications, some co-authored by Soo-Ji).

At the first meeting, Soo-Ji took some data and reviewed my medical history. Then we started the treatment

I would like to explain a couple of points on the treatment that may not be obvious from previous information.

First, the needles are considered safe because they don’t go too close to the nerves. I don’t know if this is because they are shorter than typical pain-medicine injection needles in the west. They do imaging only the first session to see the patient specific anatomy, inserting the needles under imaging, but from session two onward they insert the needles without imaging. They are very experienced at this, and you can see it from the confidence they have in inserting them. They have probably done it hundreds if not thousands of times on many patients. The needles have special caps that can be opened to inject the Lidocaine, so that they don’t need to insert needles again for the injection with a syringe. Optional, you can get injected in the same trigger points placenta derivatives, like growth factors and cytokines. This is not so dissimilar from what some stem cells clinics do, but these are not stem cells. This is still done through the needle caps, so again no need for an injection with a syringe or a new needle insertion. I said that these needles might be shorter than western injection pain medicine needles, but I’m not sure. However, this is absolutely not acupuncture, they are still injection needles, they go deeper, and the pathways are completely different from acupuncture.

The clinic is based in Gangnam. Everyone is extremely kind and professional, from the doctors to the nurses.

I would ask you please not to ask me any questions before I reach session 12 or 15. I will post an update myself.

Greetings from Seoul,
Chinmoku

--- END OF FIRST REPORT FROM SEOUL ---

 

Wow. Now THAT'S what I call a surprise post!

Wishing you all the best Chinmoku. Sincerely hope you get a decent result.

 

@Chinmoku, I admire your focus to pull this off with severe disabling tinnitus. I sincerely hope this works for you.

 

I'm impressed with your courage and fortitude. Thank you for reporting your experience so that we can learn from it. I hope the treatment works well for you, best of luck.

 

@Chinmoku, well done for making it there and to treatment. I really hope this helps you.

Thoughts are with you.

Best wishes.

 

I hope so! I'm not sure where the generally accepted cutoff is between acute and chronic. At the clinic they considered it to be 6 months.

 

@Chinmoku, you're an absolute beast for making the trip. The courage required to see this through is beyond anything I'd ever be able to conjure for myself. Especially factoring in the severity of your case.

Respect.

Fingers crossed that you're rewarded with some degree of relief.

 

Rooting for you, @Chinmoku. Does anyone know if this treatment can be done without lidocaine? Like can they just stick the needles in? I know it might be painful, but I spike to lidocaine and recently got a permanent worsening from it. Is lidocaine an essential part of the process that makes this treatment work for some?

 

Nothing but admiration for all that have gone ahead to try this. Really hoping you see some relief and I'm sure I speak for the entire community when I thank you for taking action, and in doing so, short-cutting the usual processes which would take years of additional research/studies/etc to find out if there were something to this treatment or not.

 

The other thing about Seoul is that it has very wide (and busy) roads in the city (apparently to facilitate tank access in the event of a war). To cross these roads, there are plenty of underground tunnels. When we arrived in Seoul a few years ago we weren't aware of the tunnels and crossed over the roads by foot, to the shock of the locals!

 

Jerad, I'd rather not say much at the moment but this is a question I can answer. Moreover I know that you, like many of us here, are suffering terribly, your descriptions of this madness are among the most effective I have seen.

To answer your question, the treatment is nuanced. First of all they tend to inject minimal doses of lidocaine, I can find out how much, Soo-Ji told me that it is very low dose when I was worrying about ototoxicity. Second, they vary the dosage according to your response, and they have an internal protocol to do that.

Now, the lidocaine has a precise function in this treatment. The idea is that nerves should be first stimulated and then blocked. This sends contradictory signals to the brain that should disrupt the tinnitus signal. Without lidocaine, you would only have stimulation of innervated tissue through needle placement, which does not help per se.

I don't know if there is any other injectable other than lidocaine that they could administer and that it is not ototoxic, however I will ask this question to Dr Soo-Ji Sirh tomorrow, she is always very kind and willing to answer any questions. However, my preliminary impression is that this treatment cannot be done without lidocaine.

Do you remember the dosage of lidocaine that spiked you, and where was it injected?

 

No matter how many different views we have on the "power of the mind" topic, I wish you all the very best from the deepest of my heart and can't wait to see you testify after the treatment, hopefully reading it got less noisy inside your head.

Wish you all the best, man, sincerely. Take care of yourself out there.

 

I believe they would perform the treatment without lidocaine if you requested that.

But like Chinmoku, I was told the lidocaine dosage was too small to be ototoxic.

 

Good luck @Chinmoku.

You are in my neck of the woods now. If you need a break after Korea, come and stay with me in Laos. You are most welcome (honestly).

Praying for good results my friend. If you have the cash, go to a Korean spa for a relax and hot pools.

Peace be with you, you are in everyone's prayers.

DL

 

Thank you, man, I really appreciate this, my friend, sincerely.

Thank you also to @UKBloke, @David S, @Joe Cuber, @Uklawyer, @beefling, @Jerad, @ploughna, @Daniel Lion and everyone who reacted to my post. I need all the support I can get to get through this, I thank you all. Going to session 4, but as I said I'll comment much later. Chinmoku over and out from Seoul.

 

Update on this for @Jerad and everyone possibly interested in this.

Lidocaine ototoxicity: if my exhausted brain understood Soo-Ji correctly, they inject at concentration of 0.5% (dentists use 2%, ototoxicity is deemed to start at 1%) and volumes are adjusted depending on the patient reactions but always low, typically between 0.5 mg and 1 mg. They say this is safe. These are low doses and that's why the reset may take quite a few sessions, they want to induce it safely and gently.

They are anesthiologists so they have alternative anesthetics they could potentially inject but they don't, to avoid systemic effects to the heart and the rest of the body.

 

Aren't the spa and pools loud over there? No beaches in Laos, but probably they are loud, aren't they? Haven't been in one for 3 years now. Loved them so much.

South Korea is somewhat close to you, Daniel.

 

You’re braver than I am Chinmoku.

 

No, Karl, just desperate beyond measure.

It would be so great to meet you Daniel. Let's see what happens near sessions 12-15, because I started catastrophic and every single step of this trip is harrowing. I need to improve. Thank you for your support and kind words, as always.

 

Can I ask how this is different from a SGB block? I'm confused about the difference.