My Tinnitus Has Coincided with Some Sort of Vestibular Disorder — Making Me Suicidal

A history of my ear troubles:

• Had a major acoustic trauma over two years ago when I was sitting in the way back of a car basically on top of a speaker for an hour. The bass was incredibly powerful. This resulted in hyperacusis and awful bouts of pulsatile tinnitus that lasted several months. At this time, I had no ringing in my ears.
• Tried my best to protect my ears over the last two years, but made a major screwup when I used a pressure washer without hearing protection about 7 weeks ago. I now have constant ringing in my right ear, intermittent ringing in my left, and occasional pulsatile tinnitus in my right.
• About 2.5 weeks after the pressure washer, my right ear was exposed to a 116 dB alarm. My ear was about 6 inches from the alarm source.
• My tinnitus instantly got worse.
• Several days later, I started having balance issues which lasted over a week.
• As the balance issues were subsiding, I started having visual symptoms - noticing visual snow in low light settings, afterimages, significant increase in floaters, difficulty focusing eyes.

I thought I was noticing improvement in my tinnitus, but it seems to have gotten louder lately and shifted to more of a hissing sound, and it appears more often in my left ear. The visual symptoms scare me deeply. I saw two of the best ENTs in my state and they aren't able to help me. I have no detectable hearing loss, and I've basically been diagnosed with a vague vestibular disorder.

I am convinced this vestibular disorder was caused by acoustic trauma, and that maybe low frequency bass notes were powerful enough to cause serious damage to my inner ear.

I've suffered with anxiety and depression my whole life. COVID-19 isolation has already been depressing enough, and now I'm supposed to endure everything with these two new ailments. I don't think I have the strength anymore. I haven't been this suicidal in ages.

 

I'm so sorry that you have so many symptoms along with tinnitus. The first few months of tinnitus is the worst phase ever!

Good news is that most people who suffer from sound trauma, like a loud noise, will have their tinnitus volume decrease over months!

Are you taking any meds? Consult with a pharmacist or doctor to see if the meds you're taking will aggravate your tinnitus. Here's a list: https://www.ata.org/sites/default/files/Drugs Associated with Tinnitus 2013_Updated2017.pdf

Personally, most meds spike my tinnitus over time. Once I stop them, my tinnitus will take days to weeks to go back down in volume. From my personal experience, pain meds, allergy meds, and sleeping meds spikes my tinnitus (although those spikes are not that bad). Sound trauma or neck pains spikes my tinnitus extremely bad. So please be careful about the meds you take or any aggravation to your head/heck.

Most people with initial trauma of tinnitus will DECREASE in volume. Don't give up hope.

Try to bathe your room with fan noise, open windows to allow more background noise and anything else to fill make your surrounding with white noise. But becareful about turning on the TV. You don't want a random actor screaming their lungs and kicking off another tinnitus spike.

I personally find that at night time when I'm about to sleep, I play both white noise and sleep lullabies together. Get a phone or two and play white noise or sleep lullabies next to you.

Hang in there and distract yourself from thinking about tinnitus.

 

Thanks, unfortunately I’ve been doing most of that for almost 2 months now and it’s just gotten worse. Vestibular issues seem to be much more complicated than just tinnitus. Every day I feel closer to giving up.

 

Don't give up, man. I've had tinnitus every day since 1974. And worse tinnitus since a brain tumor diagnosis in 2008. Since then I've done so much enjoyment of life - I had a week vacation in Italy just before COVID-19, and I survived COVID-19 last year. I fly in my Powered Paraglider and ride my Waverunner up and down Panama City Beach whenever the weather permits. Don't let the stupid noise in your head be what takes you out. Plenty of life to enjoy ahead of you.

 

Progressive bilateral vestibulopathy here. Yeah, it's annoying with VSS and oscillopsia, vertigo, hell of a tinnitus (6-9 sounds) and severe hearing loss. But well, just have to live with this.

 

How are you doing now?