This is just flat out weird. The tinnitus is dissipating, yet everything is a tone lower?So I'm currently on a long course/taper of Prednisone at 60 mg and it has made me worse again. Bilateral diplacusis with every single sound being a full tone flatter than it should be. It has eliminated a substantial amount of tinnitus but this is just BAD. I am tapering off now and going low sodium, sometimes the pitch perception fluctuates to say the least.
But honestly as my profile picture says, I am killing myself if this is permanent. This is a losing battle I'm tired of.
Are the sound distortion effects lower/worse, or actual sounds "like someone talking" are lower (always or intermittently in little distorted blasts of lower pitch when hearing a real sound)?
I know. A lot of questions. But it kind of sounds like what happens to people on Carbamazepine which blocks sodium channels and is used for typewriter tinnitus to great success yet a side-effect in like 20% of people is pitch shifting a semitone lower.
It sounds like the steroids are doing something similar. God only knows how. Maybe with lower inflammation other neurofactors can finally bind to receptors in the nerve (and they were building up because negative feedback, you still had tinnitus so the brain made more of the factors)... and you're in the midst of a re-balance or re-myelination (if there was sheath damage from inflammation that also can repair once the inflammation goes down, and you'd be receiving "new" undegraded signals).
Prednisone might have some kind of effect on neurosteroid concentration/activity.
Did you call your specialist up to let them know what's been changing?
At any rate, when people come off of Carbamazepine, their pitch perception reverse to normal. Hoping the same for you and that once the steroids are done this all fades off and you're left with something inconsequential compared to now.