Tinnitus/Hyperacusis for 2+ Months — Unsure of Exact Cause

It’s taken me a long time to start writing this. I honestly didn’t want to be yet another person coming on here with worries and questions about something that may very well be temporary so I thought this was best left for when it has become clear that this may be here to stay. This is going to be long because of it, and for that I apologize. Luckily I am pretty much up to speed on some basic knowledge (I have been reading a LOT and won’t need to ask basic questions that have been asked and answered a thousand times already). Anyway, after 2.5 months things have not gotten better as of yet and I could really use some guidance because my combination of symptoms are a bit perplexing and because I lack a clear diagnosis, I am not sure how to proceed. I am going to list everything that could be of importance, even if it seems like overkill.

This forum’s active community has taught me so much over the last two months and I am amazed at how many of you come here regularly to offer advice and comfort. You are angels. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I have what I perceive to be moderate tinnitus and hyperacusis that has been going on for a little over two months now. I’m starting to forget timelines and events and hope this will serve as both a record to keep track of everything for my own benefit but also in case someone else has a similar experience and this may just be what they are looking for.

I moved into a new home/apartment one year ago and the previous tenants were clearly smoking in the place. I do have smoke allergies and the smell itself is quite bothersome to me as well. My nose is constantly stuffy because of it. The smell would come out of the air vents when turning on the air conditioning. I am originally from Europe where nobody has AC in their home and I tend to get a sore throat and runny nose from air conditioning. This sounds ridiculous to most Americans but if you are from Europe, you probably know exactly what I am talking about.

Three months ago when outside temperatures started reaching 90 degrees and above (I live in the southern US) I got an upper respiratory infection or cold of sorts and this was exacerbated if now caused by the constant need to blast the AC. I would wake up sick. Sinus pressure, nose completely clogged up, and if I remember correctly my ears were sensitive as well. I have bought 2 air purifiers since then and the smell is much better but it’s dusty all the time.

After dealing with this for weeks I tried to restrict the AC from reaching my bedroom and letting only the rest of the house get cool air. so that I could at least sleep without the air blowing on me. Needless to say I endured ridiculously hot temperatures at night but my sinus problems became more manageable as time progressed so I kept doing what felt healthy.

Fast forward. I had an event that may be classified as inducing Acoustic Shock (no official diagnosis but based on my own reading this makes sense) and afterwards was exposed to sound levels of up to 78 dB for about an hour. At the time things seemed fine but then immediately afterwards I noticed that I had tinnitus. At the time I didn’t know how loud any of this was but recently I went and recreated the exact same scenario and measured the decibels and there is no way that I was exposed to anything even approaching 85 dB for even just a fraction of a second. I have always had sensitive hearing and fatigue and/or headaches set in long before most people would even be bothered by sounds. I can’t stand live music like in a bar for instance.

Since I had ringing in my left ear twice before in my life, and both times it went away after a day or two, I hoped this would go away as well. It didn’t.

After several days, maybe even a week later, I had a horrible experience unlike anything I have seen anyone else post about.

An extreme form of hyperacusis set in when I tried to lay down to go to sleep. It was excruciating. The slightest touch to not just my ear but even the side of my face sounded like a thousand nails scratching a chalkboard. Everything became an amplified scraping sound that left me in actual pain and agony. Placing my head on my pillow was unbearable and I had to lay absolutely still to not make any sounds or everything felt like I was being hooked up to a car battery or something. I found a sound generator online that helped me mask the sound and after sheer exhaustion I eventually fell asleep. This never occurred again but I have had hyperacusis (albeit to a milder degree) ever since.

I went to my primary care physician after a couple of days. He said that I had otitis media and that I had a retracted eardrum. He prescribed me antibiotics (Sulfamethoxazole) and Budesonide Nasal Spray (a steroid). I took all the medication as prescribed but saw no improvement after I finished with the antibiotics so I returned to the doctor. He said my eardrum was still retracted. He prescribed me Prednisone. I continued using the nasal spray and took the Prednisone orally.

In the meantime I got a referral to go see an ENT. There was no appointment available for more than two weeks. I desperately called every day to see if there was a cancellation so that I could get my appointment moved up. No luck. I finally went in to see the ENT on July 5th.

An audiologist did an audiology exam and tested my Eustachian Tube. She said my eardrum was not retracted and not perforated, that air passes through my Eustachian tube just fine. After the exam she told me that I had lost 15% of my hearing in the lower frequencies. That the outer most portions of my cochlea had nerve damage and that my ability to understand speech was slightly impaired in my left ear. She said 15% is minor and that I therefore don’t need any sort of hearing aid but may need to ask people to sometimes speak in my direction so that I understand them.

I then went in to see the ENT. He basically just parroted what the audiologist said but added that my infection reached the cochlea and caused nerve damage there. I tried to ask him about the sound exposure while my eardrum was retracted. I wanted to know if moderate sound levels could have exacerbated things because of an impaired eardrum. Every time I tried to ask a question he cut me off and said “you already had the nerve damage”. I couldn’t even get to mentioning the horrible hyperacusis I had that one night when everything really started to get worse or ask him anything of substance. He was interrupting me rudely and impatient and told me “if you would have come in earlier, we could have injected something to reduce the inflammation to save your hearing but it’s too late now”. I immediately told him that I desperately called every day for two weeks trying to move up my appointment and that they had nothing available. He shrugged his shoulders and said “yea well we are really busy this time of year. Everyone comes in at once”. He then said he would refer me to a neurologist and for an MRI.

My medical record clearly states that I am highly allergic to MRI contrast dye. I once had a severe reaction that landed me in the ER with what could only be described as feeling like my blood was boiling. I blacked out so I can’t elaborate further but calmly I told the ENT receptionist that they need to just make sure it is an MRI without contrast dye and look at my medical record if need be. She then deliberately told the person on the phone to make an appointment for an MRI “With contrast dye” trying to deliberately emphasize that she is going to do what she wants. At first I thought it was a simple mistake but when I pointed it out again she got snappy and escorted me to a room and shut the door on mez Without getting sidetracked too much the ENT came in and tried telling me that “this is a different contrast dye”. Nothing in my medical record indicates which contrast dye I am allergic to so how would he even know. He made it up and when I pointed this out he said there is no such thing as an allergy to contrast dye. He got very annoyed and said “fine, we will do it without dye”, stormed out of the room and I never saw him again.

I was about to do the MRI but couldn’t go in to get it done because I likely caught something at the ENT office and had a horrible sore throat and fever only days after going there. I went to my primary case physician. According to my doctor it is most likely strep throat. He prescribed me Amoxicillin. I just finished taking it. I am much better now but I still have a bit of post nasal drip and congestion. Not sure how much of it may be allergies though.

As for the neurologist, long story short, the ENT forgot to do the referral even though I have been waiting for two weeks and calling in twice leaving voicemails asking why nobody has contacted me. Turns out they must forgot about me and now nothing is available for another 7 or 8 weeks.

When I went in for the strep throat, my own doctor followed up asking about the tinnitus and even without telling him about the horrible experience he was puzzled and annoyed that the ENT did absolutely nothing for me. He said they were supposed to actually do something, not just tell me to wait and see. Needless to say he gave me a referral to an entirely different ENT. I will be going there in about two weeks.

I told them I want a fully battery of audiology tests. I want to redo everything since I have no faith in the first clinic and for my own piece of mind would like a second opinion.

I went ahead and did a hearing test a few times on my iPhone. It is calibrated to use EarPods. According to that test I have about 40% hearing loss in the lowest frequencies. The chart looks much worse than the one I saw at the audiologist. I assume that being in a sound proof room I was able to pick up on sounds a lot earlier than doing it in my bedroom. Ambient sound levels in my room were about 40dB max so that makes sense to me. That said, the app says it takes those sound levels into account with the microphone, so who knows. I just wanted to get another measurement and 15% hearing loss is far off from these much worse results.

Other possible causes:

Eustachian Tube Dysfunction

While the audiologist may have been able to pass air through the tube, some people on here claim that such a test may not be enough to paint the whole picture. Given the congestion and constant allergies/rhinitis/sinusitis, it would makes sense if my tube is at least partially still filled and thus partially closed. It would make sense then that my hearing is partially impaired. This may not be cause of my tinnitus since I do probably have hearing damage but it would certainly make things worse if sound isn’t traveling through the tube as well as it could. I can modulate the sound of the tinnitus by turning my head upside down or shaking it. That creates a bit of a sense of ear fullness and amplifies muffled hearing. It gets louder if I do that but how much this is related to ETD I don’t know. I thought it isn’t related because rubbing my left eye also makes the tinnitus louder but I can’t rule it out either.

TMD

Many years ago my dentist told me that I need to be careful with my TMJ and not eat anything hard to chew. I once or twice had clicking in my jaw after eating something hard. It never happened again so I forgot all about it. About the same time my tinnitus started 2 months ago I was eating hazelnuts almost every day so I now stopped doing that in case it is contributing. Also, from being constantly sick over a 2-3 month period and spending unusual amount of time in bed I have been laying on my jaw a lot so I had some TMJ pain/swelling that I could feel when putting my head on my pillow. Everything feels fine so long as I don’t touch it but if I apply any pressure to my TMJ I do feel a small bit of pain/swelling.

TTTS

The symptoms of TTTS most closely match up to my own except for the fact that I do not have fluttering in my ear. I do get a tickling sensation in my ear at what seems like random times, but it feels fairly deep in my ear and possibly caused by fatigue. The only time I have clicking in my ear is when I yawn, and only sometimes. But the sudden fear of damaging my hearing from acoustic shock combined with my hyperacusis constantly resulting in a startle reflex has made me more anxious over the last two months. My tolerance levels are getting worse and if I am exposed to too much noise like going shopping or driving my car, I get physical pain in my ear after a while. It feels very similar to a swollen lymphnode but in my ear. The sound of putting away plates or dropping a fork in a bowl is ridiculously loud and makes my tinnitus worse as well. Anything that could make it worse makes me even more anxious. It is a viscous cycle. I know TTTS is anxiety based and that makes sense. I just don’t know how to explain away that there is no fluttering sound or clicking.

I am at a loss when it comes to what I should be doing. On one hand I don’t want to walk around with earplugs, thus making my ear even more hypersensitive and likely to see hyperacusis symptoms get worse. On the other hand, if I indeed have TTTS then I need to let it calm down and I can’t really do that if I expose my ear to the normal every days sounds that stress it to the point that I get ear pain from the muscle likely contracting. If I knew what exactly the problem is, not only could I do more to facilitate healing but I could also begin to come to terms with everything better. While there is clearly hearing damage and my tinnitus may never go away, our brains adapt and I know that there is a chance that I habituate to it so that I hardly notice it or at least to where it doesn’t impair my day to day life. The hyperacusis however is a bigger problem at the moment.

Anyway. I know this is all way too long and detailed but our ears are so complex and there is so much interrelated that I don’t want to leave anything out. I do not expect a medical diagnosis from anyone on here, obviously. But perhaps someone here notices something similar to their own experience and can shed some light on all this.

I will keep this updated and definitely post about my progress, if any. I know from personal experience that people on here may be desperate to hear a snippet of good news that relates to their own condition so I hope that I can help by giving back. This forum provided me with so much help over the last 2+ months. I know it is frustrating when people seemingly disappear after they feel better. I’ll make sure to let everyone know if there there is anything new that develops.

Thank you all.

RA

 

Hi @RAlex, I'm sorry to hear about your tinnitus / hyperacusis and the doctor odyssey you're facing at the moment. I'm suffering from tinnitus and hyperacusis myself, so I have an idea of what you're going through. When I first got hyperacusis I basically locked myself away for about three quarters of a year - COVID-19 came in handy in this regard - and it was the only thing that made a difference. Like with your hyperacusis the most ordinary things set me off. Things were so painful that I didn't think I'd ever be able to get any part of my life back. However, I have been lucky in this regard, because my hyperacusis eventually improved and I'm now able to do many things I've been able to do before. The lesson I've been forced to learn is to listen to my body. The first twinges or signs of a spasm and I'm back in isolation for a while. Many of the people in my life aren't happy with this and think I'm overreacting, but since they've never had tinnitus and / or hyperacusis I just leave them to their thoughts, because it's something you just cannot understand if you haven't experienced yourself.

My advice to you would be to try to give your ears as much rest as possible and not get frustrated if it takes a long time to see an improvement. As for your second ENT appointment, I hope you new doctor will take you and your condition more seriously and also treat you in a more humane way.

All the best,
Leila

P.S.: I don't know about the US but here in Germany no physician is allowed to turn away a pain patient if they wonder into their office in person. So if you're dealing with an emergency like the one you described again, it might be worth insisting on seeing your doctor without an appointment.

 

Thanks for the well wishes @Leila. I guess the upside to having people get annoyed or not taking you seriously is that it shows you who your real friends are or at least who you can count on. That’s worth something.

I know exactly what you are referring to in regards to German doctors. My dad was a doctor in Germany so I am all to familiar with their system. Patients would ring our doorbell at 3 in the morning and he would run downstairs and help them, not even thinking twice about it.

Here in the US it’s practically the opposite. There is probably no faster way to get a doctor to want to get you out of their clinic than to tell them you have some sort of medical emergency. They will immediately tell you not to come to them and instead tell you to go to the Emergency Room in a Hospital. In fact that’s the very first thing you hear on the answering machine whenever you call any doctor. I don’t even blame them. They really can’t take on the legal liability. Even if they don’t commit malpractice, almost everyone here wants to find someone to blame who they can sue for millions and reach a settlement. A lawsuit alone is so expensive that their malpractice insurance rates climb to unaffordable levels. It would force them to shut down their clinic. I personally know a doctor who this has happened to. His license became practically useless overnight because without insurance you can’t keep practicing. In Germany you don’t have these massive settlements. People have their wrong foot amputated and the court awards them maybe as little as $20,000 but here in the US they would get $20 million. This drives up the cost of every other doctor’s insurance as well.

But yes, if I ever have another experience like I had that night I wouldn’t hesitate to go to the ER. In hindsight I see that it was much more severe than I realized at the time. I think perhaps that night is when I probably lost part of my hearing.

Locking yourself away for that long must have felt like an eternity. I’m sorry, that’s awful. Even for an introvert like me who loves being at home it would be too much. Giving it time and rest is what I plan on doing. I think the hyperacusis is more likely to go away or improve than tinnitus. It feels more debilitating than tinnitus so I am hopeful. If I can get mostly over the hyperacusis, I think I can adjust to the tinnitus eventually.

Be well!

 

I feel the same way as you do about just wanting to get past the hyperacusis. I've had pain hyperacusis for about 5 years now. The first 4 years it was only very small pain that went away very quickly.

Recently I have stabbing/burning pain that lingers for days/weeks even in silence. It does get better but my tolerance is getting lower all the time and setbacks still happen and are extremely annoying.

Hyperacusis does seem to get better for everyone over time though. Even the very extreme cases who get pain from their own voice tend to get a lot better with time.

Just need to be careful around loud noises. The issue I had was I got too bold when I was getting better and ended up as bad as ever. Not even sure what it was exactly, just a lot of things together sent me back to square one, maybe even a little worse.

I'm going to get stem cell treatment soon though and maybe that Dr. Shim treatment in Florida too, or visit him in Korea.

There are a lot of drugs being trialed but it's such a massive long shot and none of them will be out any time soon, if they ever are.

Once you start to get better though, your outlook improves very rapidly. It's hard to remember to be as careful all the time since you forget how bad it was to some extent.

 

Yes, I noticed precisely that. I actually find this to be a difficult balancing act that is possibly the largest impediment to seeing long term improvement. When you have hyperacusis it is very difficult to differentiate between ‘seemingly’ loud noises and those that are dangerously loud. Even if you know that a sound isn’t loud enough to cause hearing loss, that certainly doesn’t mean it can’t physically aggravate our ears and/or make tinnitus worse.

On one hand we are told that hypervigilance is largely to blame for hyperacusis. On the other hand we are told we need to be very careful with our ears to not make tinnitus worse. Add in the fact that in our daily environment those loud sounds often appear quickly and unexpectedly, there is no other way to protect our ears other than to take preventative measures ahead of time and this requires being careful and staying conscious of our ears and hearing problems. That might as well be the definition of anxiety, and it exacerbates the symptoms.

Sure, if once can afford to stay at home and especially live alone, it is theoretically possible to avoid any noise exposure and give oneself the time to ‘heal’. BUT what good is that when we need to be desensitized to everyday sounds. Nothing makes tinnitus worse than being in a quiet room all day and hyperacusis gets worse when our ears get accustomed to being around very little noise.

While I know it helps others, constantly trying to turn on some kind of masking noise at home is not working for me whatsoever. Having to fumble with speaker volume and starting/replaying whatever sound constantly is so inconvenient and a repetitive chore that I just give up even when I know that listening to my own tinnitus is not preferable. Wearing headphones so that it is more convenient and so that that I can walk around freely sounds great but is fatiguing to me even at low volumes and the fact that everyone suggests avoiding headphone use doesn’t help either.

Best thing honestly is to do something so captivating that you are distracted. If there is one thing I truly recommend to everyone, it is to find something you can become so engrossed in that you forget about your ear and hearing problems even for a little while. I know it is easier said than done for many of us to focus with ringing or buzzing in our ears, but we must try to find something enjoyable even if it is just for a few minutes a day. I think that’s the key to improvement.

 

Update:

Hyperacusis changed from high pitched distortion layered on top of all sounds to a Tibetan singing bowl sound. As if everything was being heard through a crystal wine glass.

Am able to open left Eustachian tube easily by contracting muscle in face. Things become louder and sound exactly the same as when yawning or swallowing. Tibetan singing bowl sound may be what other people refer to as metal bucket sound indicative of PET (Patulous Eustachian Tube). Echo of my own voice is not super loud though. Perhaps early or mild PET. Drinking lots of water and inhaling steam may be helping but am unable to confirm that this is why I had 3 days of few symptoms.

Then one day the sound was virtually gone only to return again the next day but as pulsatile tinnitus (which I never had before).
This largely went away for 2 days when the pulsatile tinnitus became just a quiet thumbing sound which wasn’t that disturbing.
Yet again, the next day the singing bowl sound in rhythm with heart beat returned again. The pulsatile tinnitus does get better in the evening and sounds more normal like as if you have just done cardio and your blood is pumping.

Also developed an additional tone of tinnitus at 400 Hz that comes and goes completely away, possibly due to stress. Depending on how loud the pulsatile tinnitus is, I sometimes simply don’t hear it unless I listen for it but other times it is gone completely.

Went to second ENT after waiting yet another month.

Audiology exam shows low frequency hearing loss as more severe than the first audiology exam but probably more accurate as it is entirely consistent with my own tests using the ‘Hearing Test’ iPhone app.

New ENT was far more knowledgeable than the first. Concerned more about the pulsatile tinnitus, actually examined / questioned me about my jaw and teeth. Prescribed me Orphenadrine to resolve TMJ swelling. Said he isn’t worried about PET. He seems to think the TMJD is the culprit.

Also, he finally answered my question regarding my painful experience one night with extreme hyperacusis. He conformed my suspicion and said that it was acoustic shock. He wasn’t concerned about it.

 

The pain I get is always delayed so it's difficult when I'm trying to reintroduce noise since I don't know exactly what's too much.

I think typing is hurting my ears even through earmuffs so I'm gonna stop now lmao.

 

Yes! Good point. By the time symptoms manifest themselves it is too late to take preventative measures. I am therefore also never quite certain what caused it and have a difficult time preventing it in the future.

Funny because my clicky switches on my keyboard have been bothering me today and normally they aren’t that bad.

 

Dear @RAlex,

I will not wish you "welcome" here on this forum but you are not alone in this situation, I hope you will get all the help you need!

 

@Christophe_85, thank you anyway.

Update: 9/13/2022

I took Orphenadrine as prescribed. Jaw pain, teeth grinding and teeth pain all greatly improved but there is no perceptible difference in tinnitus symptoms.

I kept taking the prescription for a week even after all the pain went away up until the point that I developed some kind of nerve issue in my left leg (same side as tinnitus). Thinking it may be a side effect from the drug (a muscle relaxer which works by affecting your nerves), I stopped taking it. More than 2 weeks later my left leg still has not improved. I have been lying in bed so much that it may be from stiffness in my lower back but I can’t rule out the Orphenadrine being the culprit. While it may be entirely unrelated, I want to document it here in case someone experiences a similar problem. It feels like a cell phone on vibrate, buzzing on and off in my leg from about my calf down to the bottom of my foot, reaching as far as my big toe.

Back to tinnitus:

MRI scan shows nothing of any significance as I had assumed but looking at the imaging myself it appears like they only scanned my brain and not my ear. WTF.

ENT #2 didn’t even bother to ask about the previous TMJD diagnosis. I told him that I am sometimes better and sometimes worse, with my tinnitus, distorted hearing and hyperacusis changing over the course of several days. He took it to mean that my hearing was fluctuating, which it is not. Through objective testing using my iPhone app and calibrated AirPods as well as subjective experience, I have the same low frequency hearing loss all the time. While understanding speech in the low frequencies may indeed be worse when my tinnitus is at its loudest, my hearing never improves when compared to my healthy right ear. But me saying that to him didn’t seem to interest him. He was convinced my hearing is fluctuating so now he believes I have Cochlear Hydrops even though there is nothing visible on my MRI and he did not recommend doing any additional testing like ECoG either. While my symptoms match up pretty well with Cochlear Hydrops, they do with Patulous Eustachian tube as well, if not better. Hence I told him that saline nasal spray seems to help me a little bit, and he shook his head saying “that doesn’t do anything”. It flew right over his head. Anyway. he said “I am going to put you on diuretics”. In that moment he might as well have been a car salesman saying “before you can test drive anything I am going to need to run your credit”. While not entirely opposed to trying a diuretic, I had enough of the BS. I respectfully said that this will be my 6th prescription and so far my tinnitus has not improved whatsoever but all this has wreaked havoc on my stomach and possibly caused my nerve problem in my leg, so I am not going take anything else just yet. He rolled his eyes, abruptly ended the consultation, said “well that’s the treatment” and left. I didn’t even care at this point. It’s clear he is not a person who takes interest in investigating a problem thoroughly and working with the patient to find it. Pushing drugs, that’s all.

I want some more conclusive test results than just playing a guessing game and seeing which drugs may just happen to work. That’s not how you diagnose a problem, nor properly treat a patient. But I digress.

Finally I got to see a neurologist and he wants to do an MRA, which I have been wanting to do from the beginning. Before making any diagnosis or recommendation he wanted me to have an opportunity to fully tell him everything I could possibly remember. He gave me all the time I needed and was very patient, even taking notes of everything. A surprisingly good sign I thought. He thinks I could have inflammation that’s causing all of this. I will be doing blood work for autoimmune disorders as well.

He gave me some exercises to do which may fix my leg vibrating. He said he could prescribe me something but that’s entirely up to me if I want first try the exercise.

While Cochlear Hydrops may in the end be what I am suffering from, ruling out other issues is a priority for me and it looks like I am getting one step closer to that now. I’ll keep updating as I find out more.

 

What was the acoustic shock episode like?

That's funny, only a partial truth... now I am thinking about Reese Witherspoon's amputated neighbour, who bought a mansion on the court settlement.

Tinnitus and hyperacusis do not get worse if you are in a controlled - silent - environment. In fact that's the only way to break the cycles of setback-pain and pressure-worse baseline-worse hearing-worse tolerance... so characteristic of pain hyperacusis.

Outside the controlled environment one does need hearing protection, as anywhere, at anytime there may be very loud sounds (traffic is the obvious example, and the others are construction noises, sirens etc, hyperacusic ears can't deal with those kind of sounds).

 

Something akin to being tortured with electrical current that made your whole head vibrate. I heard an incredibly loud buzzing sound which accompanied the vibration for about an hour. This would amplify to truly unbearable levels if my head touched anything, no matter how gently. Whether laying my head on a soft pillow or even gently brushing a finger against my jaw or touching my cheek, it was as if the inside of my head had a high power battery in it which was short circuiting. In hindsight I should have gone to the ER. Perhaps this is when I lost considerable amount of my hearing and early intervention with Prednisone could have helped.

BTW my ENT now confirmed that this must have been an acoustic shock.

Thanks, that is good to know. I have been trying to just put up with everyday sounds in order to avoid becoming even more sensitive to them. I don’t live alone so I can’t easily anticipate when when loud noise may appear. I’ll try to wear earplugs anytime I have to deal with dishes and other awful sounds and see how that goes.

 

Yes, that sounds like accoustic shock. It sounds really bad.

Try earmuffs around home, as they are easier to properly insert and remove than earplugs.

In my particular case, earplugs gave me some pressure when I started using them. You will seldom have this problem with earmuffs, and if you do notice pressure, just take the earmuffs off for a few seconds to equalize pressure and put them on again.

The tricky thing about foam earplugs is they sometimes wrinkle inside your ear, when they are not properly inserted, but sometimes this is hard to notice, and affects pressure, sound perception etc... other than that, earplugs are fine and generally effective at blocking sound, and comfortable to wear.

 

Thanks for the tips. Yes, the earplugs create a lot of pressure and I get ear pain from them. Maybe the crease is the cause because I roll them before I insert them and I guess when they expand they probably do create a crease. I’ll try just squishing them.

I’ll have to find one of those flimsy earmuffs that are comfortable to wear. I have an unbelievably good set of 3M Peltor X5A earmuffs that dampen everything you throw at them but they are so tight that I got severe TMJ pain from them that took a month to heal. Anyway, so long as you don’t suffer from TMJ issues I highly recommend them, especially for the $18 or so that they go for.

 

This sounds like a classic case of SSHL.

As soon as you noticed the hyperacusis, it is possible that had an ENT gave you an oral course plus intratympanic steroids you may have been able to partially recover some of the damage.

I suspect this was an allergic reaction to whatever was in that dwelling.

That said, SSHL can present in many different ways. It can present as hearing a different tone in each ear when hearing sounds. It can present as hearing two different tones in one ear when hearing sounds. It can present as a low to medium (typically from 200 Hz to 2000 Hz) tonal tinnitus and it can also present as a whooshing or seashell type tinnitus and sometimes both these types of tinnitus can be presented at the same time. With tonal and seashell type tinnitus often the sound masks the hearing loss and only after an audiogram is done is this loss revealed.

The treatment is always immediate treatment with steroids, both oral and intratympanic steroids, if no improvement with oral steroids. Steroids can be taken for as short as one day and all the way up to 20 days. Intratympanic injections are usually a one day thing, with the oral steroids often extending out to 2 to 10 days in most cases. Lowest frequencies are the easiest to recover, with the highest frequencies (above 8 kHz) being close to impossible to recover any threshold at all. Even the mid to high frequencies between 2 kHz and 8 kHz can be difficult to recover and this is where an injection can help.

 

My second careless and clueless ENT said I have Cochlear Hydrops and that I should take diuretics.

I thought Cochlear Hydrops causes non-pulsatile tinnitus only. Is this ENT clueless or does he know something that maybe just isn’t commonly written anywhere on the internet?