Was So Close to Habituating. High-Pitched Reactive Sounds That Disappear and Come Back.

[MrBonk]

For almost what felt like two weeks, the high pitched reactive sounds in my head/right ear had basically vanished.
One of them is like an oscillating flicker, like someone is changing the channel on a CRT TV. Only the pattern is random.

Another is a whistling type sound, though this has gotten far less reactive over time when it occurs. And has disappeared for time periods even longer.

Leaving only a very light hiss in my left ear and a lower 2210/1105hz sound in the center of my head that I can only hear if I plug my ears or in silence or when it spikes. Not a huge deal.


I was so incredibly happy, i've had them disappear before too for similar periods of time.
All was fine, I even went and rode my ATV last weekend for about an hour and a half with ER-20 plugs in under my helmet. While this very temporarily spikes my other tinnitus sounds. It doesn't bother me that much. As I can take my plugs out and still feel like I can barely hear them.
Still no ultra high pitched stuff. The following 3 days were 10.5 hour shifts at work. (T felt like 0.5/10 90% of the time) No problem until towards the end of the 3rd day, I noticed high pitched sounds started to come back. And then they came back about 80% full force of the worst it has been. This was right on the cusp of a 4 day weekend for me. I'd say my T went from a 0.5/10 to a 5 or 6.

So naturally it made yesterday a real bummer. It did seem to get better by the end of the night. And today it seems like it has gotten better too. A 2-4 instead.

My Sinuses on the other hand are just as erratic as ever since my T started. I'm pretty sure it's Turbinate Hypertrophy. It's the only thing that seems to match my symptoms. Not even Pseudeoephedrine can completely make the symptoms go away all the time. Sometimes I can feel my nose fighting the meds back when I took it. I can feel the pain as it starts to swell up and close off. Or that it only gets them open enough to breath.
It does make a massive difference though once i've taken it enough days in a row. What sucks though is that it's an OTC drug that requires a prescription in Oregon. So I have to jump through all these hoops to get it.
And since I have to wait 5 months to get in to an ENT (which will probably be not helpful at all). I could really use PE. Waiting to see if my PCP will fill a script for it today so I don't have to drive 8 hours round trip to CA or WA to buy some.

I also regularly do a Neti Pot rinse and took Nasacort every day for almost 4 months straight and have now switched to Flonase to try that. Nothing seems to consistently work.

I don't see how all of this could be allergies. I had skin testing done almost a decade and a half ago and I was only allergic to Cats, Birch Trees and some kind of grass. I've had cats my whole life, never really had a problem other than the occasional runny nose. Even now, Cats don't produce any reaction anymore.
The only thing that came up when I did blood allergy testing recently was a very large allergy to Penicillium.
We've got some mold at work in a cold area (~40f), but it also produces no reaction that I can see. So must not be that kind of mold. If I'm in that area long enough without adequate protection, it does make the congestion worse with a runny nose and more snot. The night this started I was in an area about -15f or so without adequate face protection for about 25 minutes. I feel like somehow I broke my nose or something lol.

If I could get my high pitched sounds to completely disappear and my Sinuses to stop fucking with me. I could forget the rest of my T for good.

 

[Owen]

ETD is poorly understood and often goes undiagnosed. The average ENT assumes that if there is any passage of air between the nasopharyngeal opening and the middle ear - even if positive pressure is required to do so - then there isn't a problem. However, poor passage of air can still cause fluid to be drawn into the middle ear space, thickening of mucus and irritation to the delicate structures of the middle ear.

It is worth keeping up with the steroid nasal sprays just to keep sinuses as calm as possible, as well as trying to avoid alcohol as it causes inflammation in the sinuses and try and keep away from people with colds.

 

[MrBonk]

Yeah, the aches that i've had in my right ear off and on (less intensely with time) always feel like it's in my the back top of my throat at the entrance of the ET and then up into the ear from there.


I'll definitely keep using the spray (Including the method to spray it into the ET), because it still feels like my right ET does not work as well or open as properly as my left ear does. (Though not nearly as bad as it used to be when it would get instantly pressurized and cause CHL)
I often feel like I have to pop it. And when I do, I can hold the muscle in my throat and it will pop several times in a row with a cracking-like sound.
Where as when I chew, I get an actual crackling type sound mostly in my left ear in the TMJoint and sometimes in my right ear.

Keeping away from people with colds is difficult due to working at a drug store and occasionally in the pharmacy there as well. After getting T none of it seems to phase me much though because I almost always have persistent Post Nasal Drip when my nose isn't congested at work. Gotta have cough drops handy at all times :/


I've only drank Alcohol once since getting T. I don't remember it making anything worse, but I tried to keep it to a minimum anyway before getting T. Though I did drink the day before I got T. Lightly however.



Thanks for the kind words.