Tinnitus After COVID-19 Infection — What Can I Do Next?

Hi everyone, I finally signed up to the forum because I've reached my 5 month Tinniversary since I started hearing it and hoping it would go away.

I was hesitant to get vaccinated for COVID-19 because I have had heart palpitations in the past and I knew I would be likely to have issues with the vaccine, so I've lived a very secluded life during this pandemic instead. Loneliness got the better of me in about June 2021 when I knew I had to start seeing friends because I was miserable.

I got COVID-19 in August and it didn't even surprise me, I was devastated with a positive test result. I decided to work through my illness from home, thinking that acting normal would make me feel normal. At about day 5 after that I broke, I had to rest, I was feeling symptoms like hypoxia, neck was sore from being hunched over at the screen coughing. I had tinnitus among the hypoxia symptoms, it didn't worry me because I had no idea that something like that could last.

I rested for a week or so, slowly recovered, slowly managed to get stamina for walking back, took every supplement under the sun to speed my recovery. Vitamin D3, Bromelain, Quercetin, Zinc, Magnesium. On my first day out after that I got new braces fitted to my upper arch.

Everything was slowly recovering, but heart rate was still always over 100 and tinnitus persisted. I went to A&E twice worried because I hadn't slept with the tinnitus. I think I went for around 6 days without sleep at one point. Eventually got given Zopiclone and Mirtazapine for mood and sleep.

5 months on and I still rely on these things to sleep. Every day that I wake up and it's still there is depressing. My neck feels like unoiled machinery, every movement is a crunch.

I am at a point now where I don't know what to do next. I've had so many GP appointments to no avail. I don't know if I should remove my braces and hope that it'll help. I don't know where to turn next. Recently it has started to give me strange eye movements, when it's very loud my eyeballs start twitching, some lights hurt my eyes and look flickery when they didn't before.

I've somehow held onto my job, but I do feel like my real life ended in August and this has all been a bad dream ever since. Can't concentrate on anything, ears, face, neck always all feel hot. Every day I think of giving up but I've lasted for so long.

 

I would treat the neck with physical therapy and rest my eyes from too much screen time.

Be patient, still early days for you.

 

Welcome to the forum. You are not alone here. People here understand your sufferings as many of us have gone through the initial phase of tough struggle with tinnitus like you are now. Many have more tough symptoms besides tinnitus, like hyperacusis which I got, or ear pain, pulsatile ringing, multi-toned, plugged and pressured sensations, partial or complete sudden hearing loss, etc. Some of your symptoms may be from the high anxiety and stress you are having. Perhaps try some relaxing exercises or activities, leisure walking, light jogging, deep breathing or yoga.

The success stories are full of people whose tinnitus was caused by various reasons but have recovered or habituated to their tinnitus after some time by various means. This can take months to a year or two. So be patient. You are still very new in this. So don't rule out that given time and after getting support in the forum, you can get better. Quite a few new members come here after getting tinnitus from COVID-19 or from the vaccines. So you can join the main support forum and ask for more support.

I have had dentist drill like tinnitus in my right ear for decade and also severe hyperacusis shortly after the ringing started. So I was in a mess initially dealing with both of them. I had to take medications to function and sleeping pills to help with some sleep. I had relentless anxiety and panic attacks plus PTSD also. So it was a nightmare that, like you, I didn't know how to proceed. I never thought I would recover and have my good life back. But never say never. Today I live a normal and enjoyable life. I shared my success story "From Darkness to Light..." and list some helpful strategies. Hope you can check it out and also other stories. They will give you hope and you can learn something from others. In the meantime, try masking if the tinnitus really bothers you. There are many tinnitus masking apps which you can download to your phone and listen with a Bluetooth speaker. Take care. God bless.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...w-i-recovered-from-tinnitus-hyperacusis.3148/

 

2 big questions that I have.

Firstly why would my doctor not give me any steroid treatment in the beginning? I repeatedly went to doctors.

Secondly why is there only moderate hearing loss in one ear, yet I feel like the tinitus is in my head, like 13,000 Hz of static noise.

One third question that I have. If I only have slight hearing loss in the 4 kHz range in one ear, then wouldn't a hearing aid in that ear boosting that range cure it?

 

Sorry I am not a doctor so I am not sure why your doctor refused to give you Prednisone treatment. I heard from other members that different countries have different treatment protocol for tinnitus. In Canada doctors here prescribe Prednisone readily for acoustic trauma related tinnitus. Your 2 other questions are not something I know enough to answer.

 

Just so you know, your story is very close to mine as to the insomnia, got prescribed Zopiclone and Benzos (Oxazepam) after a string of nights with zero sleep. Oddly enough, I did not have any problems sleeping for the first couple weeks as I thought my tinnitus was going to go away. It was the realization that it was going to be permanent that was the catalyst for the anxiety triggering the sleeplessness.

For about a month it looked like I would not be able to ever sleep again without Zopiclone and the idea was depressing as hell, I thought there was no way I could keep living like this. I would try to sleep unassisted one night, not managing ANY sleep and get depressed further as a result.

Then one Saturday night, after 5 weeks of meds, I just dozed off at 3AM. It was only about 3 hours of sleep but it still felt like a huge relief. It was the starting point of a 2-month journey of tapering, alternating between "pill" good-sleep nights, "no-pill" good-sleep nights and sleepless nights. I was not spared from suicidal ideation during the tapering but eventually I was able to get my sleep back to normal, which really makes a huge difference in my tolerance for living with tinnitus.

I haven't had a sleepless night since September, I haven't taken Zopiclone since the end of August and I'm completely off of meds since about the middle of November. I distinctly remember that August night where the half-dose Zopiclone wasn't enough to knock me off, it was the first time the drug did not work at all and I remember thinking "Screw it, I'm never taking that shit again". In fact, that mindset worked, just thinking "It's not the end of the world if I don't sleep tonight, I've slept through my tinnitus without meds before and I'll happen again". It made all the difference. The thing is, before tinnitus I needed absolute silence to sleep so being deprived of it made me ruminate that sleep is now impossible. The reality is that it's not really the noise that primarily prevented me from sleeping, it was the anxiety and the panic attacks.

I know it's not easy but you have to make peace with your tinnitus somehow.

As for your questions, I'm not a medical expert so don't take my word for it but as I understand it:

Even though tinnitus starts with hearing loss in nearly all cases, it's severity and tone isn't necessarily proportional to the severity of your hearing loss. Some people have severe tinnitus with moderate hearing loss, others are nearly deaf but have little to no tinnitus. So there's no point trying to match your tinnitus frequency to the results of your audiogram, tinnitus is subjective in nature, so don't overthink it. And if you've had hearing loss showing up on an audiogram it most likely means you have damage to the inner ear, which is sadly permanent. Hearing aids should be of no help in this case: The inner ear basically still receives the external stimuli but has become unable to process it due to the damaged nerve fibers.

 

In practice you might be right due to the frequencies that hearing aids are created for, however, using the power of the internet I have found my frequency of most drastic hearing loss and it's high, 14700 Hz. I have piercing noise in one ear, and silence in the other ear. The tinnitus I hear sounds like flickering between top and bottom of these frequencies quite randomly.

I today downloaded an app called Whist which was free and allowed me to replicate the exact dip in sound. While wearing it on the deaf ear, my tinnitus seems to go away, until I take off the headphones. If I had environmental sounds on that range enhanced, then wouldn't it have the same effect?

 

And a follow-up: I got vaccinated yesterday since I was getting close to my 6 months from the Delta infection.

Tbh, the fever from this is quite bad, I don't think I'll get a second dose, but tinnitus remains the same or maybe slightly quieter.

 

Hello AndrewLee, has your tinnitus improved after the vaccine? Hope everything is well with you.