Tinnitus with No Apparent Cause

I woke up on Jan 20th and suddenly heard a ringing in my ears. Here's what I know:

1) The first time I heard it, it was a high pitched noise in one ear in the morning. This went away after I got up. The second day I heard a low-tone noise on one ear worse one so far. I want to say that my T has gone down but I'm not sure how true that is, the fact that I can only hear it in quiet rooms and I use a white noise machine makes it hard to measure.

2) If I'm surrounded by even mild noises such as the TV, at a coffee shop, etc, I don't hear it. My T only becomes a problem at night, I keep waking up every 2-3 hours due to a combination of anxiety and the ringing. Even when I wake up, the ringing isn't that terrible. Lack of sleep makes essentially affects my entire day.

3) I am 23 years old, have not been sick or experienced any loud noises. I was not on any medications and I don't smoke/do drugs. I occasionally enjoy a beer or wine from time to time. The only thing I can possibly think of is that 3 days before I was on a 3 hour flight.

4) I've seen the ENT and they only found a piece of wax that they ended up taking out. Other than that, I got all the regular exams and everything seems to be normal, absolutely no hearing loss or any damage to the auditory nerve. ENT said she would give me an MRI, but mainly to calm me down and assure that there isn't anything sinister.

5) ENT gave me some prednisone to try out, I'm on day 3 of the pills.

6) The first two days were the worse, on day two I woke up to a low-pitched tone. This went away within 2 minutes. This spike was the absolute worse and traumatized me.

7) The best way I can describe my tinnitus is that it's a baseline noise that's higher than usual (kinda like when we get headaches). There are some other tones that I hear, but like it said only happens when I am laying down.

8) Adding a white noise helps although it doesn't completely mask the noise. Just hearing it causes me tons of anxiety.

I am scared that whatever I have will become chronic. Has anyone just gotten tinnitus suddenly without any apparent cause?

 

Are you saying you used to hear this noise when you got headaches before? If so, for how long?

Yes of course, plenty of people. You need to go down the diagnosis path. This can help.

 

@GregCA

Not what I am experiencing right now. I am noticing that I have this baseline whenever I'm in bed and in addition to that there are some other tones. The baseline just feels like a heightened baseline from what is normal.

 

@GregCA

 

I'm asking a different question though: did you use to hear noise when you had headaches in the past? If so, how long has this been going on for?
I understand your statement about what is happening now. I'm asking about the past.