Hello. This forum has come up during searches over the last two years, and I'm finally getting around to registering.
I was traveling in southern Europe in October 2022 and walked through a crowded side street at night. I passed by a large speaker that suddenly came on and blasted me. Afterwards, my ears felt congested or "full." I went to an urgent care doctor just to make sure it would be safe to fly. No ruptured eardrums, take Ibuprofen, and if symptoms continued for a few weeks, follow up for an acoustic trauma evaluation once back home.
I felt like I was back to normal, but six weeks later I went to see Avatar 2 in a theater where the volume was way too loud. A few days after that, my right ear almost felt swollen, and the electric noise began. I went back to urgent care, and they gave me a prescription for Acetic Acid and Hydrocortisone ear drops. I also started using a humidifier, saline nasal sprays, allergy sprays, nasal decongestants, and Guaifenesin. After several months, the symptoms decreased. The cluster headache around my right ear faded, and I no longer felt like the ear was inflamed.
Trying to get doctors to take it seriously was a major challenge. You know it is not going your way when "you could be imagining it" starts getting thrown around. I'm stuck with bad insurance at the moment, which doesn't help.
During my one ENT visit, the doctor kept getting hung up on my using the word "inflammation." I was told you can only have inflammation with an infection, and there was no sign of infection. He did suggest using hearing protection like earplugs in potentially noisy environments. I started using concert earplugs whenever I expected impulse noise. A basic audiology exam showed no signs of hearing loss, but it was done at a hearing aid center, so they probably did not check specific frequencies. A sinus CT scan also came back normal.
Strangely enough, Lipo-Flavonoid helped reduce my symptoms by about 75 percent, but I had to stop taking it after suffering a different injury.
Doctors seem to get obsessed with my blood pressure being ten points too high, but are very dismissive of tinnitus. It cannot be easily measured, so it gets ignored. They could also do a much better job advising people who have just experienced potential acoustic trauma. You have no idea… until you know. And then it is too late.
It has now been over two years. When I am around moderately loud noise, my tinnitus spikes for the next few days. The analogy I use is accidentally burning yourself, but not realizing how hot the surface was until the next day. Most of the time now, I can go several hours without thinking about it, so I count myself lucky in that regard. I am hoping that if I ever have good insurance, I can see a tinnitus specialist, get a proper evaluation, and maybe try some of the potential off-label prescriptions to reduce the volume further.
More recently, I have focused on avoiding ototoxic reactions to prescription drugs. I spent over ten hours researching different blood pressure medications, and I ran all the anecdotal reports from the Neil Bauman "Hearing Loss Help" site through AI language models to gauge the different levels of risk. If this site allows long posts, I will try to copy and paste everything I saved.
For now, I'm stable on Benazepril after bad reactions to Hydrochlorothiazide, Telmisartan, Losartan, and Enalapril. Lisinopril did not make the tinnitus worse, but it caused central nervous system side effects, so I had to stop that one too.
I was traveling in southern Europe in October 2022 and walked through a crowded side street at night. I passed by a large speaker that suddenly came on and blasted me. Afterwards, my ears felt congested or "full." I went to an urgent care doctor just to make sure it would be safe to fly. No ruptured eardrums, take Ibuprofen, and if symptoms continued for a few weeks, follow up for an acoustic trauma evaluation once back home.
I felt like I was back to normal, but six weeks later I went to see Avatar 2 in a theater where the volume was way too loud. A few days after that, my right ear almost felt swollen, and the electric noise began. I went back to urgent care, and they gave me a prescription for Acetic Acid and Hydrocortisone ear drops. I also started using a humidifier, saline nasal sprays, allergy sprays, nasal decongestants, and Guaifenesin. After several months, the symptoms decreased. The cluster headache around my right ear faded, and I no longer felt like the ear was inflamed.
Trying to get doctors to take it seriously was a major challenge. You know it is not going your way when "you could be imagining it" starts getting thrown around. I'm stuck with bad insurance at the moment, which doesn't help.
During my one ENT visit, the doctor kept getting hung up on my using the word "inflammation." I was told you can only have inflammation with an infection, and there was no sign of infection. He did suggest using hearing protection like earplugs in potentially noisy environments. I started using concert earplugs whenever I expected impulse noise. A basic audiology exam showed no signs of hearing loss, but it was done at a hearing aid center, so they probably did not check specific frequencies. A sinus CT scan also came back normal.
Strangely enough, Lipo-Flavonoid helped reduce my symptoms by about 75 percent, but I had to stop taking it after suffering a different injury.
Doctors seem to get obsessed with my blood pressure being ten points too high, but are very dismissive of tinnitus. It cannot be easily measured, so it gets ignored. They could also do a much better job advising people who have just experienced potential acoustic trauma. You have no idea… until you know. And then it is too late.
It has now been over two years. When I am around moderately loud noise, my tinnitus spikes for the next few days. The analogy I use is accidentally burning yourself, but not realizing how hot the surface was until the next day. Most of the time now, I can go several hours without thinking about it, so I count myself lucky in that regard. I am hoping that if I ever have good insurance, I can see a tinnitus specialist, get a proper evaluation, and maybe try some of the potential off-label prescriptions to reduce the volume further.
More recently, I have focused on avoiding ototoxic reactions to prescription drugs. I spent over ten hours researching different blood pressure medications, and I ran all the anecdotal reports from the Neil Bauman "Hearing Loss Help" site through AI language models to gauge the different levels of risk. If this site allows long posts, I will try to copy and paste everything I saved.
For now, I'm stable on Benazepril after bad reactions to Hydrochlorothiazide, Telmisartan, Losartan, and Enalapril. Lisinopril did not make the tinnitus worse, but it caused central nervous system side effects, so I had to stop that one too.
