Could the Whooshing I Hear Be from My Environment Rather Than Being Tinnitus?

[Lan2021!]

So I have been dealing with tinnitus for a few months now as a result of drug induced ototoxicity, but recently the high pitched noise has died down quite significantly.

Unfortunately, I started hearing a new sound in my right ear all of a sudden. It kind of sounds like a whooshing sound that the the wind makes on a cold night. It's really bad some nights and not so bad other nights.

I find this strange because I was in Florida about a week ago and I couldn't hear this sound at all. I couldn't hear this sound in my college dorm at all. I did have episodes of hearing this 'whooshing' sound when I got my ear wax removed by microsuction earlier this summer and a few times when I was younger but they all went away suddenly.

I asked my mom if she ever heard similar sounds at night and she said that she hears whooshing sounds in her left ear all the time too.

This makes me think of the possibility that it might not be tinnitus, but rather my environment.

I was wondering if you guys ever had a similar experience? Is this tinnitus or could it just be the environment I'm in and the fact that I have sensitive ears?

 

[GlennS]

There is always a certain amount of background ambience in a room. I agree that due to tinnitus it creates a sort of ambiguous noise floor where you don't know where this ambience ends and your tinnitus begins. I live in a house that is near enough to the freeway that there is always a little bit of road noise, plus in the winter time the boiler is often doing something. But I also suspect I have a very subtle low frequency rumble component of my tinnitus. I kind of feel like I'm always on the Enterprise-D with that constant engine noise.