Carol Marino

Great site! Back in 2004 I contacted TT and found no help, but here you all are...

I've had my T for 10 years now, WOW! I must tell you that I have made peace with it and I have no negative feelings or thoughts toward it and therefore, it does not bother me any more.

What brings me here today is that I have developed this strange humming in my ears. It goes like this...

Back in 2009 I had some major dental work done, i.e., implants and crowns. And a year or two later I noticed that when I was in my kitchen (my furnace was behind a closed door there) I would hear the furnace in my ear. Almost like it was humming along with it. At that time I just thought it was the acoustics in my small kitchen so I just let it be. Then a few years later in 2012 I started to experience a quick buzz in my ear. It startled me but it didn't last long so I let that go too. Then it started more often until it would all of a sudden make a long buzzing after I would pull into the driveway into my garage. That was weird! This would happen all the time now. THEN...one night while I was sleeping, this buzzing would wake me up from a sound sleep. My ear would buzz on and off for a few hours. I would find myself sitting up in and crouched over to alleviate the buzz. When I would go to work, it would last for up to 5 hours, then disappear that is until the next night and the same routine would happen all over again for weeks/months. That was so annoying!! This would go on for weeks, deprived me of sleep and I worried a lot about it. As I was reading through a thread somewhere I found people talking about something similar and had mentioned a Dr. Poe in Boston, MA. I called his office and had to wait a year to get into to see him. He was the first doctor to really examine my ears with scope up my nose and down my throat. At that time (2/2013) he told me that all the muscles were very tense and that was the reason why I was hearing the buzzing. From there I went to Tufts in Boston where they made two mouth guards, lower and upper. I wore them for a while then I wouldn't. At times I felt relief and I didn't know if it was the night guards or what! But it seemed to always creep up on me. At Tufts they prescribed a muscle relaxant for me, Cyclobenzaprine, 10 mg at bedtime and 5mg in the morning. I have been doing that for almost a year now. If I take that faithfully everyday and take an 800mg Ibuprofen once or twice a day it seems to calm it down some.

After stumbling upon and reading Cullenbohannon's posts, he had been explaining about the different muscles that could be in spasm mode, and this is what I have been discovering all along. I can bring on the noise or should I say it will occur when ever I hear the furnace run, which is a low hum. My ear will hum along with it. At night when my husband makes a noise, that ear picks it up, when I walk the ear will pick up the motion of my body and hum to that, which this is all telling me it is mechanical. Although at times it will hum on its own or to something that is running and I just cant distinguish it. This all brings me to the thought of having the surgery. I can deal with the tinnitus that I have had for ten years, it is a hissing noise that is centrally heard. I don't think I want to hear this as a constant. I would like to go to some doctor that has dealt with this more often than not and maybe he could advise me. Any suggestions out there?