New to Tinnitus. Would Anyone Please Give Me Some Help or Insights?

[a-expat]

Hello everyone,

My story is rather a sad one. I was searching tinnitus over the internet and I ran across this forum. After seeing how supportive everyone is here i decided to join as well. My story is as follows:

I am currently an expat working in Hong Kong and since returning from a trip to south east Asia in late October, I developed a fever and ended up in a hospital for around a week. They never found out what the problem was but suspect it was a virus. They injected antibiotics on me while at the hospital to prevent secondary infections. Since leaving the hospital, aside from recovering from fatigue and weakness, I started developing mild white noises on my left ear that would come and go. I did a hearing test back in December, and found no hearing loss. After a little while the noises got more consistent and louder. I've been to the ER a couple times and also to ENT doctors. They checked mostly my ear canals and saw mild inflammation. They gave me antibiotic ear drops and I've used them for many weeks. The tinnitus never died down though, and instead it has gotten worst. Now in addition to the white noises I also got a steam kettle noise that would run throughout most of the day. I ran an MRI on my brain and also my inner ear and middle ear and they found nothing. One ENT doctor suspected nasal pharynx cancer, but found nothing after doing a scope inspection. Since then, I tried vitamin B, gingko, Nicergoline pills, and also pentoxifylline, which were prescribed by the doctors here. I also suspected ETD, cuz there are also popping sensations and pain on my ears, but after taking decongestants for a week, it didn't make much difference. I've read prednisone steroids would also help, but only under a brief time after an onset. Has anyone tried this steroid and worked? I've asked 3 ENT doctors here and all of them wouldn't prescribe it to me due to horrible side effects and immunosuppression that may cause various problems. They also told me it wouldn't help tinnitus at all.

All in all, I still refuse to think I am not going to get better or there is a cure.. although I read on threads here many people do need to instead habituate to it at some point.. I didn't think all of this would happen after going on a trip.. and if I were to choose again I would not go on this trip.. A ENT doctor here did offer TRT treatment but I want to see whether or not there are any other underlying disease that
might cause my tinnitus before I think of coping with it for the rest of my life. I am also afraid my conditions are going to get worst and I might also lose my hearing.

Would anyone here have any suggestions on what else I can do? Are there any surgeries people have tried? Or other operations? I am going to see a new ENT doctor this week and later on I will return to Canada to give it a shot and try the treatments there.

Ever since the tinnitus started, it has also affected all my aspects in life, including my work, and how i interact with people. I would also have a hard time to sleep and focus.

Thanks a lot for all your help in advance.

 

[Michael B]

If it helps, you shouldn't be afraid of losing your hearing due to tinnitus unless there's some underlying issue you didn't mention. And what you are experiencing and how you are feeling is to be expected. It's a major adjustment dealing with one's tinnitus. It was for me. You sound resourceful and you'll find a lot of smart people on this forum giving fairly sound advice. Things should improve for you, if not with your tinnitus, but with your ability to cope and start the process of habituation. Good luck.

 

[Aaron44126]

The good news is, if it is from an infection, it will likely get better or perhaps even completely go away. The bad news is, it's going to take a while... weeks or months.

Your case may be similar to mine. Mine started from an ear infection, which the ENT thought was viral but who knows, which caused ETD and that in turn caused tinnitus. It started as a high-pitched ring, and it got worse and worse over the course of about three weeks, and then it leveled off for a while. When it seemed like it was starting to get better after five or six weeks, I started getting all sorts of different strange sounds that one come and go during the day, including the tea kettle sound that you mention, and some electric buzzing and whistling. After another five or six weeks, those strange sounds went away and I was left with a more soft ring which was easier to handle. That has been slowly diminishing over the past three months, though it has gotten worse a couple of times, I believe in response to the super cold weather and illness (whenever I got a plain old cold, I've been through two so far this season).

I took Prednisone about four weeks in and it didn't do much for my tinnitus (though it did a lot to interrupt my sleep pattern which I was just starting to get back to normal).

You have to wait for the inflammation to die down. Some people suggest a nasal corticosteroid like Flonase, which can help move things along. I've used that for the past few months and I don't know if it's doing anything. Otherwise, there is no surgery or treatment that can fix tinnitus from ear inflammation as a result of infection / ETD.

I was a mess for the first two months before I started to feel like I was moving towards habituation. I've learned a lot over the course of the time since then and I feel that I am pretty well habituated. (Granted, it does help that my tinnitus has calmed down significantly from how it was at first.) You can get there too... I never would have believed that it was possible for me when this first started... I went through about two months of on-and-off depression and bad sleep before I started to get a handle on it.

I recommend sound enrichment for help with sleep and focus. I ran a desk fan during the day at work to have something else to listen to. I slept with a running water / crickets / general noise sound (that sounded like being in the woods near a flowing creek or something), with a sound headband plugged into my phone. Find something that you can listen to that helps make the tinnitus tolerable. There are tracks on YouTube, you should have received a message with that includes a selection of tracks when you registered for this site, I personally used the TMSoft White Noise app (https://www.tmsoft.com/) which has a selection of sounds and allows you to mix them. You don't necessarily want to completely cover up the tinnitus sound, as you'll never make progress on getting used to it in that case. Over time, I was able to stop using masking sounds, though I still sleep to plain brown noise set to a quiet volume.

Good luck and I hope that it starts getting better for you soon...

 

[billie48]

Would anyone here have any suggestions on what else I can do?

Welcome to the forum. You have received great advise from above posters. If your ears have no problem and the cause of your T is unknown, the best thing you can do is to learn how to 'manage' your tinnitus so that you can habituate to it even if it stays. Saying that, it doesn't mean your T won't fade or disappear on its own. The body can do miraculous healing that can surprise us. But to facilitate the process of healing, we need to learn to keep stress and anxiety level down as they are the fuel T needs to spike and to perpetuate the suffering. So the battle with T has to do with the mental side too.

I was in a mess years back with severe T & H first hit me and I didn't know how to 'manage' T initially and I paid the price. But I subsequently did learn some helpful strategies from others and have created some of my own. After applying these helpful strategies, the recovery was pretty miraculous. From darkness to light, from being near insanity filled with constant panic attacks, depression and sleeplessness, I am now living a normal, productive and absolutely enjoying life. If you have the time, check out the story below. Good life can be back. Don't despair nor panic. Take care. God bless.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...w-i-recovered-from-tinnitus-hyperacusis.3148/

 

[a-expat]

Thank you everyone for their kind replies. I went to a new ENT doctor this week and like all the other doctors.. he wouldn't prescribe me the steroids.. he did give me however a month prescription of sermion tablets. The analogy is that this medicine would allow more blood to enter my brain/head so it can hopefully help on the tinnitus.

I will try this medicine again, but I am not having my hopes up too high. I will update if I get any better. After this, I have no plans on what to do anymore. I am not sure if I should just try to order prednisone online myself, but there is a risk cuz there is no guidance from a doctor.

I just hope there will be a cure to cure this awful disease for everyone that is suffering for this once and for all.

 

[teacher34]

Thank you everyone for their kind replies. I went to a new ENT doctor this week and like all the other doctors.. he wouldn't prescribe me the steroids.. he did give me however a month prescription of sermion tablets. The analogy is that this medicine would allow more blood to enter my brain/head so it can hopefully help on the tinnitus.

I will try this medicine again, but I am not having my hopes up too high. I will update if I get any better. After this, I have no plans on what to do anymore. I am not sure if I should just try to order prednisone online myself, but there is a risk cuz there is no guidance from a doctor.

I just hope there will be a cure to cure this awful disease for everyone that is suffering for this once and for all.

What country do you live in, that you were able to get Sermion? I'm in the USA and my alternative doctor was willing to write a prescription for it, but it isn't FDA-approved in the US. I'm trying to find another country that I can get it from.