SSHL Tinnitus at 26: Woke Up with Fullness in Ear, Followed by Tinnitus and Muffled Hearing

I’m not looking for medical advice, just some opinions.

I woke up 6 weeks ago with a fullness in my left ear. This quickly led to high frequency tinnitus and muffled hearing in that ear. Perfect timing due to COVID-19 (I’m in Canada) so called my doctor and he thought it was allergies. I wasted two weeks using a nasal spray to unblock my Eustachian tube, of course this didn’t work. It was SSHL. My doctor refused to believe otherwise so I called an ENT and they rushed me into a hearing test. As I expected, there is a 35dB loss above 4kHz. This is now 4 weeks after the onset and I’m placed on oral steroids. After 10 days of these I take another hearing test and there is no improvement.

Now it’s 6 weeks after the onset and my ENT wants to give me steroid shots through my eardrum. The tinnitus has remained solid, but I’ve gotten used to things a bit. My skin scars easily and I’m afraid of horrible scarring in my eardrum leading to further hearing difficulty. Should I just cut my losses and deal with the way things are? I feel like if these injections should work, then the oral pills I was taking should’ve yielded some improvement.

 

Hey, I'm also in Canada. I just saw an ENT myself (waited 6 months to see him after a concert trashed my hearing). I asked him about the hole in the eardrum after injection and he said it had never been a problem for him, and usually heals pretty quickly.

Another member here @JohnAdams had like 70 injections done in Korea and his eardrums were fine.

I say go for the injection asap.

 

Way too late for the steroids to help. If you are the kind of person who will regret never taking a chance however small then go for it, if only for peace of mind.