What Happened to Me (Diagnosis)?

I REALLY have no idea what happened to my ears. I'm a quiet person and don't listen to loud music but I'm now suffering with high pitched T in both ears.

Let me provide a timeline and can anyone tell me what I possibly did because then maybe it can be reversed.

Oct 2016:
-New upstairs neighbor rips out carpeting (and sound proofing) and has wooden floors and tile in the bedroom installed (...like it is a ground floor apartment).

-While trying to sleep on one of the first nights I notice a light pulsing pressure in my ears while trying to sleep in my bedroom (which is directly below theirs). I believe it is a fan they left on all night.

Nov 2016:
-The sounds get louder and worse. Due to the high vaulted ceilings she has and no carpeting or soft furniture the sounds of even passing cars reverberates her floor/my ceiling thus vibrating the rooms of my house. I feel it more than I hear it in my inner ears and it is nauseating. It's like I'm living in a drum.

-I drive to a near by Publix parking lot in the middle of the night to try to sleep in my car to escape the vibrations I'm feeling. I can still feel them no matter where I go...

Dec 2016:
-I can't sleep in my bedroom anymore due to the constant vibration feeling (she likes to keep a fan vibrating on the floor of her bedroom). I'm sleeping out in the living room on the couch at night. The problem is an outside air conditioning unit is malfunctioning across the street and when it turns on it literally shakes my walls (so I'm sleeping close to that now). The larger area of the living room makes the vibs less but still exposed.

-I start researching "low frequency vibrations" at this time (you feel them, you don't hear them).

-My friends sometimes hear her sounds but none feel the vibrational part that bothers me. Even my upstairs neighbor says "I'm too sensitive." Note I've lived with someone else living above me for years and not had these problems until she moved in. She made acoustic changes through poor construction.

Jan 2017:
-I invest in "noise canceling headphones" and wear them for hours in my place. After wearing these a few times I notice my ears burning when leaving my place one morning. Not sure if since the noise canceling headphones emit a counter frequency and are trying to counter long low frequencies that maybe it actually was harming my ears?

Feb 2017:
-I can't live with the noise. It's driving me nuts. I decide that I'm going to rent out my place (maybe someone else can live with her noise) but first a test. I invite my buddy to sleep over and see if he can survive a night in my bedroom with her noise. I sleep in the living room. 5am that morning i walk into the guest bathroom and hear a loud "wind rushing noise" in my right ear. This scares the hell outta me. My theory is my left ear was on the pillow and the right one up exposed to the outside broken "wub wub wub" of the A/C unit. I move in with my buddy that day to get my ears out of that environment.

Mar 2017:
-I notice I can still hear the low frequencies at his place but not as bad. I still have the rushing sound in my right ear when I listen for it.

-I find the Tinnitus Talk Forum's LLLT thread and order a laser.

-The A/C unit above my desk at work starts bothering my ears ("wub wub wub wub")

Apr 2017:
-The laser arrives and I use it infrequently but for 20 mins when I do, maybe 2/3 times a week max. Doesn't seem to help I think.

-My roommate gets me half sick. We both recover.

-I notice my hearing dulls a little and I feel a warm fullness in my ears, I assume it is due to the lasers.

-The woman upstairs has a water main leak in her kitchen that breaks holes in my ceiling and floods my kitchen and living room. She doesn't call me even though she has my number and knows I'm not living down there anymore...

-I discover it after 3-4 weeks have gone by and now my kitchen is molded.

May 2017:
-We go over to rescue what we can. Get exposed to mold.

-We both get sick again like 2 weeks after recovering, mainly sinus stuff with me.
-He recommends to me to flush my sinus's out. I don't know how to do it right and lean my head back thus washing the sickness into other parts of my sinuses and middle ears.

-About a week later after falling asleep doing an LLLT treatment (it auto shuts off at 20 mins) the next morning I notice a loud "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" in my ears that I don't have to listen for to hear, it is as loud as speech. I hear it OVER sounds.

-I panic and post on Tinnitus Talk about it.

-A couple weeks later my ears are hurting, it hurts to lie down, it hurts to swallow. I hold my nose while blowing to try to help my ears, it hurts, but it also seems to do something when I do it. Not sure what this was. I know I had overdosed on liquid vitamin B12 and D3 before this happened.

I still have this. If it was a 10 now it's just a 9 because I'm habituating. I think I have a fungal middle ear infection. I have a sore eustacian tube and still some soreness in my ears.

The doctors are NO HELP. Gave me anti-bacterial, took it for 10 days, no effect, but 2 days after finishing it all I felt sick and feverish.

I've been told that anti-bacterial can make fungal worse. Does that reaction mean I was killing off my body's defenses and it is fungal (due to the mold?).

The worse of this occurred away from my old place so I think the worst occurred just within the past couple months. The only funny thing was the burning at my old place. It did have a slight mold problem BEFORE she did the damage to my place...maybe I was exposed then and had a low level infection until I doused it with water from washing my sinuses. Fungus loves water to grow.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I'm in HELL right now. Also I just got 30 days notice at my job...I think my T made me cranky and I butted heads with a bad manager we have.

Please help.

P.S. I saw an Otolaryngologist and he wouldn't give me anti-fungal and just insists that we don't know and that I listen to white noise.....what good is he...

 

Too many things going on to hypothesize... get your diagnosis started. Hearing tests, blood work, MRI, CT Scan, etc... as needed.
You can follow this flowchart to guide your (and your doctor's) efforts.

 

They gave me a hearing test and say my hearing is in the "normal range" but that I'm not hearing everything. They want me to do an MRI but I think that will show NOTHING like it does for a lot of people. I've got a slight sore throat where my eustachian tubes drain into the throat. That makes me think there is an infection. Will the "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" go away after the infection clears? I can't live like this...I can't sleep

 

Sweetheart, most people in this thread cannot sleep. Like @DaveB said, its time to start getting some tests done. You came to the right place. For now try your best to calm down as you figure yourself out.

Are you sure you're not the one with the vibrations in your ears? That can be tinnitus as well. And I'm guesting Certain sounds could trigger it (don't take my word for it) and that's why your friends can't feel or hear it? And the rushing sound is pulsatile tinnitus, I have that.


For any anxiety, try out this out
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...om-anxiety-tinnitus-associated-anxiety.22257/

We'll get through this together.

 

Stay away from molds. These can be very toxic. What kind of mold was it? Was it black?

 

I'm not sure what that means. It's very vague. If you have your audiogram and feel comfortable posting it, you may get more feedback.

Indeed, MRIs are usually done to rule out conditions that are rare, but in the odd chance that you'd have this condition you'd want to know ASAP. Acoustic Neuroma is an example of this.

If you have an infection you probably want to deal with it first. If bacterial a common way of treating is antibiotics. Ask your doctor. Make sure they aren't ototoxic if you get any prescribed. Don't trust your doc blindly: do your research yourself.
In many cases Tinnitus subsides after the infection clears up, but that can take a few weeks for it to happen.

Good luck.

 

There is a good chance that it will go away. But you might have to wait 4-6 (or more) months before it happens (ears take forever to heal). The good news is that it might get less piercing and/or less loud in 1-2 months. If you are unlucky enough for it to not go away, there is still a good chance that the sound you will end up with will be less annoying than this sound you are hearing now.

You can try taking amitriptyline (10 mg). It is non-addictive, and a pill or .75 of a pill helped me sleep in the early days without making me drowsy.

 

Thank you all for the kind responses. I'm actually still kinda feverish right now.

Thanks Natalier. I'll do my best.

I believe it was black mold. Even though I had my little surgical mask when we salvaged stuff, I didn't wear one when I showed the mold removal guys what they were dealing with so I might have breathed it then. Or maybe I was already exposed waaay before when I was still living there before her water line break.

I took the 10 days of anti-biotics that my regular doctor prescribed and 2 days later I was feverish (this is the 3rd day after antibiotics ran out for me). This makes me wonder if it was fungal (because taking anti-bacterial can make fungal infections worse).

I REALLY hope so Bill. I will NEVER EVER EVER rinse my sinuses out again!!

The fact that I can't get my doctor to prescribe me anti-fungal is RIDICULOUS. The worst it could do is do nothing! But if there is a chance it could heal me then why not? It's like the doctors would rather feel they are right than take a chance on healing me!

Also, are there other ways to heal a fungal middle ear infection? diet? vitamins? just wait it out and let my immune system do it?

 

Keep visiting doctors. Eventually you will find one who will give you the antifungal that you would like to have.

 

Thank you for sharing your experience. I will know to avoid rinsing my sinuses...

 

Well, if you do, don't be stupid and do it like I did. So apparently you're supposed to lean your head to the side or lean forward. Well, genius that I am, I leaned BACK as I thought that would be the best way to reach everything. Well I did! Just not what I wanted to do.