Tinnitus Since October — Getting Better

Hey all, new member here, female, in my 40’s.

I’ve had a complicated ear year. In the summer I was having ear irritation issues from wearing earbuds too much, which I stupidly ignored, and eventually it seemed to mostly get better. In early September/late August, I suffered a blast of feedback in both ears while recording music on my computer (I am a guitar player/singer/songwriter, and I’d been learning how to use professional recording software). For a couple days I felt like my hearing wasn’t as good, but no ringing. I was super scared but then things seemed to resolve. Like a week later, I began feeling like my hearing was off/dull - especially out of my left ear. As a musician this was extremely alarming (and I suffer from anxiety - which I’ll get into in a bit - so I didn’t cope well at ALL). At this point I was again worried that I had done lasting damage to my ear as a result of the untreated irritation and/or feedback incident. I ended up at urgent care one night in the second week of September and they found that my left ear was blocked with ear wax. They cleared the ear wax - aggressively, I felt - but afterwards I still didn’t feel great. My ear felt water logged and crackly for hours. I was SO FREAKED OUT. I’ve had ear wax cleared a couple times in the past and it was never a big deal. By around midnight things seemed to be getting back to normal and I was hearing more clearly. But a couple days later my ear still felt a little stuffed, so I went to an ENT and I was relieved when my hearing test was normal. I thought that was the end of my hearing issues. Hoo boy was I wrong. It was only the beginning.

I have suffered from anxiety on and off for years and for the last 8 years or so I’ve been prescribed very low doses of klonopin to help me through rough spots, which has helped tremendously and has never caused me any issues. On average I’ve taken 20 .5 mg pills a YEAR. Well, recently in mid Sept., soon after my ear wax and feedback trauma related ear scare, I went to my GP (new-ish doctor for me) and asked him to prescribe me more klonopin because I’d been out since the spring and was beginning to have trouble again (in large part because of the anxiety brought on by my ear issues). After discussing my history of anxiety with him, he suggested I try an antidepressant which he said could control my anxiety so that I don’t have to take klonopin anymore, not even occasionally. Seemed like a reasonable idea, so I agreed to try, and he prescribed me Wellbutrin (150mg at first, up to 300 mg after 2 weeks), plus up to 1 mg a day of klonopin to help with expected side effects of acclimating to Wellbutrin (agitation/sleeplessness).

Wellbutrin made me feel and function better at first, all in all. After about 3 weeks I went up to 300 mg as planned and around this time I think is when I first started noticing tinnitus. However I felt great and it didn’t occur to me to be terribly bothered by it. I was taking about 1 mg of daily klonopin during this time, usually right before bed. About a week went by after going up to 300 mg of Wellbutrin and meanwhile I had been reducing my klonopin intake, in accordance with my GP's plan - such that I was not taking it every day anymore, and when I did, I was more likely to take 1/2 a pill instead of 1. Eventually towards the middle/end of October I was barely taking klonopin anymore, and on October 29 was the first day tinnitus officially became intrusive and a freak out-level problem. At first the bothersome symptom was high pitched squealing but in less than a week I began to experience fluttering/crackling sensations in my left ear as well. A handful of days when things were really bad, I had stabbing sensations in my left ear too. Not only that, I felt like the quality of my hearing was completely off. I wasn’t able to enjoy listening to music and doing so gave me anxiety. I felt like I could not hear all of the vocal harmony layers in my older recordings that I had made. And when I tried to sing, I felt like I couldn’t hear myself properly. I was a mess.

After doing research around the time I began freaking out, I went off Wellbutrin (first down to 150, and took my last dose on November 17). My GP thought I should stay on Wellbutrin and felt the ringing would subside in time but that didn’t feel right to me and I didn’t want to take the risk. I was afraid that if the tinnitus was being caused by Wellbutrin, it might get worse over time and staying on it longer would perhaps increase the chances of it becoming a permanent issue. So I went ahead with a taper down plan (I would have quit cold turkey but my GP advised me not to). I ended up at the emergency room during the first week in November as I was having trouble sleeping and anxiety was spinning out of control, but they couldn’t do anything for me (they reinforced that I should not quit Wellbutrin cold turkey), and for a couple weeks there my quality of life was very poor. I hit rock bottom On November 18, the day after I quit Wellbutrin completely - that night I got literally zero sleep, and the next day I had to cancel going to a convention I’d been looking forward to attending all year because of my hearing issues and lack of sleep. I was so sad, you guys.

On November 20 I went back to the ENT. Ironically, as noted above, I’d been to see him only recently, but at the time my complaint was not ringing in my ears (they asked me about that, and without hesitation I said I had none at the time) and that was before I took any Wellbutrin. I went back for them to check out the ringing complicated by the recurring fluttering in my left ear. Unlike the first audiology test they gave me (which came back normal, as I said), this time they tested high frequency hearing and they found that my left ear was worse than my right ear in those high ranges. So for the first time I felt validated in knowing that I wasn’t completely imagining things. Something IS worse about my left ear, compared to my right. But it’s hard to know if the issue was caused by the ear wax blockage, the aggressive clearing of it, the feedback incident, or the Wellbutrin and/or klonopin. I wish they had tested at the high frequencies during my first visit because now I'll never know if the issue was there before I took Wellbutrin and daily Klonopin. I do feel pretty confident, at minimum, that one or both of these medicines aggravated or amplified any pre-existing hearing issues I might have had.

Concerning the klonopin, at first in early November after I began freaking out about the tinnitus, I had committed to staying off klonopin completely in case that was the main culprit, but I learned that a little bit of klonopin (1/4 - 1/8 mg) reduced my tinnitus and made the difference some nights between getting something like 2 hours of sleep and a more reasonable, amount, like 5 or 6. So in the first week of November I started taking klonopin again, first in small doses nightly then after about a week alternating days, and then eventually getting to where I am now - I take a small dose a day or 2 a week, on bad nights, to help me get to sleep.

Here I am about a month after being off Wellbutrin completely and gradually things are getting better. I think I experienced a significant reduction in tinnitus the first week after being off w Wellbutrin and it’s been a more gradual reduction since then. I have some very good days on which I can almost imagine that I am cured, alternating with worse days - but each of the worse days seems milder than the ones that came before. My symptoms continue to be ringing and also the strange fluttering in my left ear (which I’ve learned I can stop by either increasing the volume of sound at the time it’s happening, or cupping my hand over my ear and stopping the entry of sound completely - weird, huh?). For a while I absolutely could not get to sleep without the aid of white noise apps on my phone, but in the last week or two I’ve progressively needed these less and less. On December 5 I wad relieved that for the first time in a while I was able to emotionally enjoy listening to music again, and that’s continued. Slowly I’ve been getting back to singing without anxiety and generally regaining my love for music.

At this rate I am hopeful that in another month or two I’ll be completely over this - or at least over it enough that it will be a non-issue in my life. It’s very close to being a non-issue now. Ultimately I don’t know for sure what caused my tinnitus, and given my complicated recent history as I’ve outlined above, I may never know. But I’m here to say that sometimes tinnitus can and does get better with time and I am living proof of that. I’ll try to update you guys in another month or two about how I’m doing. In the meantime thanks for sharing your stories and I hope you enjoy your holidays.

 

It is rare for the recovery to be that fast. Good for you, your T will probably be gone soon.

 

I hope that’s true @Bill Bauer! Thanks for reading and responding. It’s been no picnic but I’m glad to be getting through it and I’m hopeful about the future.

 

In case you haven't seen it, check out the thread below.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/spontaneous-recovery-stats-over-70-recover-3-studies.21441/

 

I did run across your thread, earlier today. It's very interesting stuff and it should provide hope to a lot of people, especially those who know for pretty certain that their tinnitus was caused by a loud noise.

Hopeful information like this and first person recovery anecdotes are really important to put out there to provide some balance to the stories of long term debilitating issues. It stands to reason that most of the anecdotes that end up on the internet are written by people who are in despair and suffering from the worst problems. I believe that most of us who find themselves reading this forum do get better, but I have a feeling that most get well before they are compelled to join the group and actually post anything. I was nearly one of those people. I joined and posted today because I felt I might be able to help someone especially who is in the early stages of this monster and feeling deeply frightened. A month ago I was in despair. A month later, I'm not gonna call myself cured yet, but my life is almost my own again and I have every expectation that things will only continue to improve. Also let's be careful about the gross, unsupported (and frankly untrue) negative generalizations on prognosis that we put out there because they scare the bejeezus out of people. I was going to provide you one particularly awful example here that scared me so much when I was at my worst last month, words spoken by an irresponsible nurse that I read about on the internet, but I realized that by repeating those words here I might trigger someone else (even though I don't believe what the nurse said is true - especially now that I'm feeling better).

 

Its nice to read a success story. Or, at least it seems you are on your way. I wish you all the best.
Im 3 months into the T and I've felt a couple of times that my T was going away only to have it return quite loud again. the spikes are hard to manage my way through. This site is good to share your stories on and to get support and encouragement. Hang in there

 

Thanks @Rob Hammer , you hang in there as well. In time hopefully the spikes will come less and less often until finally you won't remember the last time you had one. I find my own spikes/bad days easier to deal with now that I've racked up a bunch of good days. A break from the 24 x 7 is the thing I was most desperate for when all this started and everything seemed easier to cope with after experiencing breaks. When I'm having a bad day I can now fully trust that the symptoms will soon stop for a time and that very soon I'll have another good day or days. Today I have some quavering going on in my left ear reacting to the ambient noise and low murmuring of morning office conversations. Yesterday I had very faint ringing but no movement in my left ear to speak of. It's so strange how things evolve on a day to day basis. Overall the trajectory seems headed in the direction of healing. This too shall pass.