Tinnitus After Ear Infection — Now Clicking and Strange Soreness in My Ears

Before 01/2022 I had been an avid listener of music; I would listen to all sorts of things from loud to silent and beautiful. Because of my love for music, I took care of my ears as if they were my firstborn—I would be sure to take breaks, I listened to music below 50% volume, I mixed my headphones to remove frequencies I found to be to harsh...

It's been 4 months since I got tinnitus. Although I took care of my ears in terms of volume, what gave me this ringing was an ear infection. Needless to say, I was horrified; not only did it ring, it stung, and pulsated all day and night.

I had gone to my first doctor, which looked in my ears and pretty much immediately deduced that I had an ear infection, fair enough. She gave me ear drops—Neomycin, if my memory serves me right—and sent me on my way for 2 weeks.

Now, the Neomycin got rid of that pulsating, and with it, most of the pain was gone—leaving me with just the ringing. You're likely aware that if I was happy with that, then I wouldn't be typing this in the first place.

At the start of February, I scheduled an ENT appointment set for early March. To save the details, I went a month with ringing, and the ENT did nothing.

Early–Mid march was easily the worst part of my suffering so far. The pain came back, and it seemed like I developed some sort of hyperacusis as I was not able to listen to most noises without reflexively covering my ears or crying into a pillow. I used to consider myself a hard worker who would get things done all day while listening to my favorite albums; it became that music was painful in a physical manner, while lying down was painful mentally.

This is when I started to notice clicking in my ears. First it was just many rapid clicks while chewing, and to counteract this I chewed gum all day until the clicking "ran out", so to speak. It used to also click when I stretched my neck or pulled down on my ears and opened my mouth.

As it stands now, my ears have this strange soreness to them, I'm fatigued, and the clicking happens when I do simple things like yawning or breathing. There is a very slight fullness to them, and of course, it rings and is sensitive to noise.

The sensitivity isn't as bad as it was in March, but March was worse than February, so on the hierarchy of the most hopeful people on the seven continents, I'm pushing for last place. Emotionally, I'm certainly doing better than March, but if there's ever a moment in a song where things are silent, or a song is supposed to be silent and beautiful in general, I will often break down for about an hour wishing I could understand what the composer was trying to covey with the silence that clashes with the soreness, popping, and ringing.

And so now, rant aside, I want the truth: Is there any hope of this getting better for me? Is there some sort of cure for this popping and ringing out there? What do I need to say to a doctor for them to help me with ETD or middle ear fluid or whatever I have? How do I habituate and stop these emotional breakdowns?

I've tried the Flonase tricks, humidifiers, Valsalva, the whole TinnitusTalkTM cure extravaganza, to no avail. My usual doctor now has me on Ciprofloxacin and Dexamethasone, but it's not doing much for me.

 

Sorry you joined this club. I'd just keep protecting your ears from loud sounds. I'd stop doing the Valsalva maneuver because it can hurt your ears if done too hard. It's good your sensitivity is getting better. Give it time and hopefully it resolves.

 

Hey! First of all - we all understand you pretty well here (more or less).

Could it get better - yes. Will it? Depends, but most of the time it does get better. How much better - no one can tell. I wish that we could give you more of a scientific answer here, but it is mainly speculation here.

Cure - you and most of us “youngsters here” are lucky, if you will. It is first time in HUMAN KIND that there are actual developments (not just theoretical talks) in hearing loss restoration. There are different approaches that target same issue from different angles. Possible cure/treatments to comfort your hearing and reduce tinnitus? Most definitely by 2025. Complete hearing restoration? Most definitely by 2040. Complete hearing restoration by 2040 would be either biological or via implants like Neuralink which can simply replace your biological hearing system with an electronic one. Although I thing Neuralink will be used for patients that biological restoration is not an option for some reason.

Look at the world right now. Tons of people in Ukraine right now are under shelling of huge canons and they definitely get hearing damage. This very unfortunate event will most likely bring hearing loss awareness to the next level. This would create more demand for treatment and more companies will come up with solution to satisfy the demand (it is a huge market that has no offers in the market).

 

Well, there have been a lot of wars in the modern age, but still none of them played a role in hearing loss and tinnitus awareness, research, treatment development etc.

Maybe after WW2 that the intratympanic injections were developed? I don't know. Number 1 disability for US war veterans is tinnitus or hearing loss, if I'm correct, and still almost no one (compared to other diseases) does something.

I hope I'm proved wrong with all this and the war in Ukraine actually does something in that way, but I doubt it unfortunately.

 

No, you are right. But hear me out - the tech wasn’t really there yet. Now it is. There is even a machine learning algorithm that apparently was able to “calculate” new type of antibiotic that no bacteria can develop resistance to.

All I am saying is that issues with hearing is becoming a more prominent issue among people in the civilized world, either because noise trains (explosions/gun shots/concerts/using headphones on max volume) - all of this “awards” more and more people with crappy tinnitus, and that increases the demand and pressure for solution.

The US army also would probably spend the money on the drug to fix veterans’ tinnitus. You just have to keep in mind that the US army is waiting on working product, but isn’t willing to invest in research and development because it cannot commercialize it.

P.S. Sorry for crazy typos, writing from cell.

 

Hey, did this ever get better?

I have exactly the same symptoms after 2 ear infections. Hissing, swelling behind my eardrum and clicking noises. Apparently it's ETD and it will eventually heal and go away but can take months to calm down.

I know it's hard to believe but hissing is a good sign. Ringing means nerve damage a lot of the time. Hissing means something wrong with your tubes (the pressure is off, causing a hiss / white noise sound). Which will eventually fix itself.

 

I'm 2 months into tinnitus and as soon as I started to cope with it and take Ambien to get to sleep regularly, then comes hyperacusis which is now noxacusis I guess from the definition.

I've been in the house for almost a week now trying to limit my voice because anything over a whisper rustles my eardrum and soreness and worse sensitivity ensues.

My breathing is so loud to my ears and chewing is uncomfortable.

I also have the clicking and popping everytime I swallow. I was thinking patulous Eustachian tube dysfunction because of the occlusion, or autophony.

I also have negative pressure in my ears so my ENT thinks I don't have patulous Eustachian tube and says "you're a unique case" and doesn't know what to do.

Now that I can't talk without blasting my ears, IDK what else to do.