Did This Happen to Any of You After Waking Up to a Significant Ear Pain?

[Josh Olson]

Hello.

So I woke up today at around 3:30 AM to great pain in my left ear similar to when your ears don't pop on an airplane flight. I took some painkillers, and went to the doctor's office. The doctor cleaned out my ears by spraying water through a needle in there, cleaned a bunch of wax out, but I noticed 2 weird things after.

1: My tinnitus was much louder, to where it was actually bothersome. I have tonal tinnitus around 8000 hertz, but mostly I don't notice it. I thought the increase in noise would disappear, but here I am 9 hours later with it still much louder than before.

2: Several sounds I had become familiar with (noises in songs, the beep of the car) had seemed to become lower pitched than before or off-pitch from what I was familiar with. This wasn't everything, just certain noises.

The doctor said it was an infection of the ear canal, and the pain didn't come back after I took painkillers in the morning (ibuprofen to be exact). Do any of you have any similar experiences? Any advice?

 

[Samantha R]

@Josh Olson
Sorry to hear this has happened to you. When your tinnitus is stable for so long then suddenly spikes, it can really make you stressed out.
Are you on antibiotics for the ear infection? Did the doctor say you had a perforated eardrum? My dad recently had a similar experience with pain in his ear suddenly and went to the doctor, and he had somehow got a perforated eardrum. He's not sure how this happened.
He has tinnitus that is severe but does not bother him at all. He said it had got louder after the perforation. It has now settled back down as the perforation has healed.
I wonder if the distortion in sounds is related to the infection?

 

[EarHair]

He probably irritated or hurt your ear. Was the sprayer just loud or pressure?