Very Nervous: Sudden Spike in Right Ear — From Pfizer COVID-19 Booster, Vacuum, Phone Call?

Friday a little after 5pm my right ear began to have a noticeable tinnitus spike. It is not my normal tone. It sounds much higher pitched, but also fizzy. When I put muffs on the volume isn’t extremely loud, but I feel like the pitch is causing it to cut through everything.

I’m not sure what the cause is, but there are a couple possibilities:

I got my Pfizer booster three days ago. The day of the shot my tinnitus did become somewhat elevated, but I had taken extra otoprotective supplements and was stressed about it. I had a pretty pronounced reaction to the booster. It knocked me on my ass for the next two days. Pretty bad body aches, headache, cold chills, aching arm with arthritic like pain in my wrist on the side of the shot, my ears hurt, and I felt exhausted. Wednesday and Thursday though my tinnitus were very low. This is fairly consistent when I’m sick to have lower tinnitus.

Friday afternoon a heating and cooling guy came to work on my furnace. I had in earplugs just in case while he was there working his tools got loud for any reason. I feel like they were well inserted, but I have issues with great insertion in my ear canals. I normally wear earmuffs to run the vacuum and such, but since I had in earplugs I ran the vacuum for a minute or so in my living room. I then decided just to be sure of my level of protection to put on a pair of earmuffs for this and finished vacuuming the room. So possibly an exposure to more vacuum noise than usual for a short period of time.

A while later a friend who likes to talk a lot called. I was probably on the phone close to an hour. Something I try to avoid heavily lately after a hyperacusis/noxacusis flare up. I had the plugs in still the entire time and finally told them I needed to get off as I didn’t want to agitate my ears.

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In addition to this spike my pulsatile tinnitus in that ear became more prevalent than usual today. Walking down stairs I kept hearing it. This is not normal. Also it’s very periodic through the day and instead I was hearing it pretty much all night. I also felt a wet feeling in my ear like water was caught in it. It didn’t feel particularly tight or anything though and I didn’t feel like I had any kind of sudden hearing loss.

My ears are also having more ETD related popping today.

The pulsatile tinnitus and ETD issues make me think it’s an inflammatory response to the vaccine. I had a hyperacusis setback after my second shot that lasted about two months.

However, I felt much better overall today from all the other symptoms from the booster mentioned above. My ears felt really good today and I had a low pain day for my noxacusis issues after everything.

Sorry to make this thread, but my tinnitus has been pretty manageable for awhile and while it fluctuates daily it doesn’t tend to spike often anymore. So now with this spike going on close to 12 hours relentlessly I’m a bit concerned and I can’t sleep.

 

I think you are focusing on your tinnitus too much and this can cause stress. Stress makes tinnitus worse and tinnitus can make stress worse. It can become a vicious cycle if you're not careful. Try diverting your attention to other things which will help take aware your focus from the tinnitus.

The overuse of hearing protection is not a good idea as you risk lowering the loudness threshold of your auditory system, which will make your ears more sensitive to sound. Use low level sound enrichment whenever possible and especially at night. I think you are under a lot of stress and this needs to be managed, so talk to your doctor who maybe able to help you lower it. Once this is achieved you will begin to feel better and the tinnitus will calm down.

Take care,
Michael