- Jul 23, 2019
- 1,075
- Tinnitus Since
- 04/2019
- Cause of Tinnitus
- Nonnatural energy source
So 15-ish months ago I had sudden onset severe tinnitus. I went to sleep one night at 11 pm having never experienced tinnitus and woke up at 2 am with raging tinnitus that has not stopped for a moment since. No sickness, no noise exposure, no ototoxic drugs. Just bam.
I was sent to a local hospital where they examined me and did an audiogram. The only significant finding was a notch at 6000 Hz that dropped out to ~55 dB. The rest of my hearing looked pretty normal for a 50-year-old guy with a slope starting above 4000 Hz going to down to >30 dB, both the slope and the notch were bi-lateral and nearly symmetrical. It was assumed by the ENT that the notch must have been preexisting from noise exposure in my youth, though I had no specific event. "Did you ever go to a concert? OK then that must be it. It was noted that 4000 Hz is where you typically see noise trauma. I was sent home with a pocket full of placebos and life went on. When my condition didn't improve after a couple of weeks I was medevaced to a proper first world ENT where I was pumped with anti-virals, steroids, got the MRI, blood work, blah blah blah. The ENT there assumed it must have been viral.
Fast forward 8 months, I had been checking my hearing regularly, maybe biweekly, with a hearing app and headphones and found to my surprise that suddenly my notch had gone away. At about 10 months I got confirmation of this when I got an audiogram at Lenire. When I told my medical history to the Audiologist in Ireland, she said that the hearing loss pattern in both the audiograms from the onset with the notch, and the one she did, did not look like a viral pattern
Flash forward to now, I have been evacuated back to the United States due to COVID-19 and have been seeing ENT's and Audiologists while here. They both say it is very odd. The audiologist said she could tell what caused hearing loss by the pattern. My current hearing looks kind of like just age related mild hearing. The audiograms from my 'event' (I have 4 done in 6 weeks during the onset), she couldn't explain. She said, as did others that it looked like what you see in folks that work in the infantry, or got exposed to an explosion, except that it should happen at 4000 Hz. She explained the physics of this, how the shock wave impacts where the 4000 Hz hairs are, damaging them. I was assured that symmetrical narrow notch damage is not what viral or ototoxic damage looks like.
One other thing to stir into this mix is I work for the US government abroad. I am aware of the Havana Syndrome and other assumed attacks elsewhere in the world. My immediate thought when it happened was that it was a sonic attack. Again I went to sleep 11 pm never having had any tinnitus issue in my life, no sound trauma, no illness, no ototoxic drugs. I woke at 2 am with severe tinnitus, hyperacusis, and a blast shaped notch at 6000 Hz. The other atypical thing is that my notch healed after more than half a year. I had audiograms up to 6 weeks out from onset showing no improvement. I have been told that this isn't how ears work.
So community, tell me, what is the explanation for what happened to me?
I was sent to a local hospital where they examined me and did an audiogram. The only significant finding was a notch at 6000 Hz that dropped out to ~55 dB. The rest of my hearing looked pretty normal for a 50-year-old guy with a slope starting above 4000 Hz going to down to >30 dB, both the slope and the notch were bi-lateral and nearly symmetrical. It was assumed by the ENT that the notch must have been preexisting from noise exposure in my youth, though I had no specific event. "Did you ever go to a concert? OK then that must be it. It was noted that 4000 Hz is where you typically see noise trauma. I was sent home with a pocket full of placebos and life went on. When my condition didn't improve after a couple of weeks I was medevaced to a proper first world ENT where I was pumped with anti-virals, steroids, got the MRI, blood work, blah blah blah. The ENT there assumed it must have been viral.
Fast forward 8 months, I had been checking my hearing regularly, maybe biweekly, with a hearing app and headphones and found to my surprise that suddenly my notch had gone away. At about 10 months I got confirmation of this when I got an audiogram at Lenire. When I told my medical history to the Audiologist in Ireland, she said that the hearing loss pattern in both the audiograms from the onset with the notch, and the one she did, did not look like a viral pattern
Flash forward to now, I have been evacuated back to the United States due to COVID-19 and have been seeing ENT's and Audiologists while here. They both say it is very odd. The audiologist said she could tell what caused hearing loss by the pattern. My current hearing looks kind of like just age related mild hearing. The audiograms from my 'event' (I have 4 done in 6 weeks during the onset), she couldn't explain. She said, as did others that it looked like what you see in folks that work in the infantry, or got exposed to an explosion, except that it should happen at 4000 Hz. She explained the physics of this, how the shock wave impacts where the 4000 Hz hairs are, damaging them. I was assured that symmetrical narrow notch damage is not what viral or ototoxic damage looks like.
One other thing to stir into this mix is I work for the US government abroad. I am aware of the Havana Syndrome and other assumed attacks elsewhere in the world. My immediate thought when it happened was that it was a sonic attack. Again I went to sleep 11 pm never having had any tinnitus issue in my life, no sound trauma, no illness, no ototoxic drugs. I woke at 2 am with severe tinnitus, hyperacusis, and a blast shaped notch at 6000 Hz. The other atypical thing is that my notch healed after more than half a year. I had audiograms up to 6 weeks out from onset showing no improvement. I have been told that this isn't how ears work.
So community, tell me, what is the explanation for what happened to me?
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