Hi everyone,
I would like to share this with you and seek advice and ask if there is anything that can be done to help me.
I am severely deaf since birth and wear BTE hearing aids.
I have always had low tinnitus when I take my hearing aid, out all my life, never once bothered me. But in the last couple of years I have been getting a massive increase of tinnitus and now I get these weird attack episodes that come at complete random and last for days at a time (usually 3 days before my hearing is reset back to normal and the ringing has subsided). I call them tinnitus attacks. When I get one of these episodes, It is a weird sensation in my head (Similar to a head rush but an auditory seizure) and then it a extremely loud ringing starts in my head and is so loud that all my hearing becomes muffled and distorted. Everything is high pitched, like the ringing.
It is like someone has turned down my hearing and turned up the ringing. It is so loud, I mean really loud, it is all I can hear, and affects my concentration, due to my head being overwhelmed by this ringing. My general speech understanding and hearing becomes distorted and messed up and I really have to focus on what the person is saying as everything is a mess of sounds that my brain cannot process properly. It makes no difference if I have my hearing aid in or out. My ears become so sensitive to sound and it goes right through my head.
I have to ride it out and wait for it to go. So that means I suffer from that one episode all day, from the time it happened and then I go to bed and wake up the next day, and I am still suffering so I have to put up with it another whole day and hope that the next day it has reset. One episode lasts an average of 3 -4 days before I wake up and check my hearing and it is back to normal.
I have no warning or cause anything to trigger them. I have had an episode when having a bath, an episode when driving my car, sitting at home resting on the sofa, talking to a friend, walking down the street, etc.... It so random and it hits me out of nowhere.
It really is getting me down.
I can go months (first time I started getting these was in 2015 and I only had 2 episodes that year but now they are getting more frequent and I am getting them every other month now, sometimes 3-4 times in a month.
My general hearing on good days has changed. Some days, voices sound robotic and weird and I can get certain sounds that really cause my hearing to react to it. A bit like my brain has tensed up to that sound, like the sound has caused my brain's processing of sounds to flinch/react momentarily. My low background tinnitus is a lot different now and 24/7, I get a droning sound that is really noticeable and sometimes clicking sound that happen in really fast bursts. In general my tinnitus is a lot more noisy and different mix of sounds now come with it.
Not sure if this is related but sometimes I have pressure in my ears sometimes and when wearing hearing aid, it is noticeable that I have pressure in my ears. but I can never seem to pop my left eardrum, when pinching my nose and swallowing. The right eardrum always pops every time. Some days my neck and upper back feels so stiff and tense, It is really noticeable especially the back of my neck can be warm to the touch. Sometimes there is a shooting nerve sensation near my lower neck/upper back.
I am worried that there is something going wrong in my brain where it processes sounds and I have had this since 2015.
I would like to share this with you and seek advice and ask if there is anything that can be done to help me.
I am severely deaf since birth and wear BTE hearing aids.
I have always had low tinnitus when I take my hearing aid, out all my life, never once bothered me. But in the last couple of years I have been getting a massive increase of tinnitus and now I get these weird attack episodes that come at complete random and last for days at a time (usually 3 days before my hearing is reset back to normal and the ringing has subsided). I call them tinnitus attacks. When I get one of these episodes, It is a weird sensation in my head (Similar to a head rush but an auditory seizure) and then it a extremely loud ringing starts in my head and is so loud that all my hearing becomes muffled and distorted. Everything is high pitched, like the ringing.
It is like someone has turned down my hearing and turned up the ringing. It is so loud, I mean really loud, it is all I can hear, and affects my concentration, due to my head being overwhelmed by this ringing. My general speech understanding and hearing becomes distorted and messed up and I really have to focus on what the person is saying as everything is a mess of sounds that my brain cannot process properly. It makes no difference if I have my hearing aid in or out. My ears become so sensitive to sound and it goes right through my head.
I have to ride it out and wait for it to go. So that means I suffer from that one episode all day, from the time it happened and then I go to bed and wake up the next day, and I am still suffering so I have to put up with it another whole day and hope that the next day it has reset. One episode lasts an average of 3 -4 days before I wake up and check my hearing and it is back to normal.
I have no warning or cause anything to trigger them. I have had an episode when having a bath, an episode when driving my car, sitting at home resting on the sofa, talking to a friend, walking down the street, etc.... It so random and it hits me out of nowhere.
It really is getting me down.
I can go months (first time I started getting these was in 2015 and I only had 2 episodes that year but now they are getting more frequent and I am getting them every other month now, sometimes 3-4 times in a month.
My general hearing on good days has changed. Some days, voices sound robotic and weird and I can get certain sounds that really cause my hearing to react to it. A bit like my brain has tensed up to that sound, like the sound has caused my brain's processing of sounds to flinch/react momentarily. My low background tinnitus is a lot different now and 24/7, I get a droning sound that is really noticeable and sometimes clicking sound that happen in really fast bursts. In general my tinnitus is a lot more noisy and different mix of sounds now come with it.
Not sure if this is related but sometimes I have pressure in my ears sometimes and when wearing hearing aid, it is noticeable that I have pressure in my ears. but I can never seem to pop my left eardrum, when pinching my nose and swallowing. The right eardrum always pops every time. Some days my neck and upper back feels so stiff and tense, It is really noticeable especially the back of my neck can be warm to the touch. Sometimes there is a shooting nerve sensation near my lower neck/upper back.
I am worried that there is something going wrong in my brain where it processes sounds and I have had this since 2015.
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