Tinnitus for One Week After Ear Suctioning

I've has tinnitus for one week which so far has been a living hell.

I'd like to thank everyone who has posted on this forum. It's been a great source of support and comfort knowing there are other people with the same affliction and that it can get better over time. I'm 36, married and my family have not been supportive.

I think I'm largely to blame for mine because I seem to have done all the wrong things reading the other posts. I've been careful to protect my hearing in the past. My tinnitus is probably very mild compared to many other people on here, but I am somewhat OCD and have always been sensitive to sound, so it's been driving me crazy. You're all very brave. 2 weeks ago I had no idea what tinnitus was. Now I'm wishing I'd never let anyone mess with my ears.

I had an ear infection in my left ear and wax blocking my hearing. Like a fool, I had it syringed which partially cleared the wax, but which apparently caused wax to splash all over and affix to my eardrum. The doctor said I had a lot of water behind my eardrum and a lot of wax and recommended I get the wax removed through suctioning.

When I got it suctioned they were hesitant to do so as wax was on my drum and it felt like they almost scraped it off and it hurt like hell.

My hearing returned in that ear, but 2 minutes after I developed a loud ringing with underlying hissing which has been driving me mad.

My ear feels full, inflamed, and very sensitive to sound ever since. In the past few days the volume of the ringing seems to have lessened by itself.

I tried finding my tone which has proven hard since my tinnitus temporarily almost stops when I try playing any high pitch ringing sound. I had tested my ears shortly before the infection and I have definitely suffered mild to moderate damage in some tones in my left ear. My ringing seems to be in the 4500 to 5500 range (hard to tell).

I'm trying to mask the ringing with a couple of modulators (for the past 2 days). One for the ringing, one for the background hissing, and playing Accoustic CR Modulation over the top. I've also tried playing plasticity, which I'm not very good at. My brain seems to habituate to things very quickly and always has, so I didn't want to do nothing until I saw a specialist in case it locked onto the tinnitus. It also seems this area of medicine is not very well understood and I don't have money for any expensive treatments, so I thought it's likely I'd have to try dealing with it myself.

My brain doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between the ringing and the masking modulators (I can't really tell either) and it seems to put it off and disrupt the tinnitus. already when I take off my earphones my tinnitus takes 5-15 minutes to come back to full volume and that volume now a lower and more managable volume (it had already gone down a bit by itself).

I've tried to keep busy and have changed to a much healthier diet after not eating or sleeping much for the last week . I'm going to see the doctor again on Monday, as the ear still seems infected, but the modulators seem to help a lot.

I'm planning to try this for 12-16 weeks and see what happens. Worst case, it makes it worse, but I play it at a low volume so I think that's unlikely. I think it's more likely I will either grow accustomed to the tone (if I can habituate to the R2D2 Accoustic CR Modulation I figure I can adapt to anything), or retrain my brain to lessen the volume or stop producing it altogether. If nothing else, it seems to mask it very well.

Thank you all again. It's very early days. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

Your T is new, could easily go away. If not it will at least improve by more or less 40% over time. Worst case it wont improve (small chance) and you will *learn* to ignore it. Give your ear time and rest to recover. Get some supplements. Have hope. I have T since may and at first i was paralysed, but now im like *why bother with this sound, its not going to kill me, im just gona live my life the best way i can*. I think mine could go away still, since i have it for less than 1 year (not *chronic*). TDLR; You will prob be fine, give it time.

 

Thanks. I think I've damaged my ear pretty bad but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Heaps of people here seem to manage ok with much worse. I took my mum to the hospital today and it was roaring away probably from stress. Now I've got home and relaxed it seems to have settled down quite a bit.