So what's wrong with me?

In My Humble Opinion
1

If any of you are doctors out there, here are the symptoms:

I get these wave sounds in my left ear. When I press on the left side of my neck, they go away (I frequently have to sleep on my left side so it doesn’t bother me). It is not a buzzing or a ringing sound and it isn’t like the beat of a heart…the waves do come regularly, but they sometimes speed up and slow down and it’s not like a thump thump or anything.

I saw an otolaryngologist about it, and (after an MRI and the thing where the check your veins with some machine thing to make sure there are no blockages) he diagnosed it as a venous hum. Granted, it does go away when I press on the vein and all, but I went to a website which talked about venous hums and they were going on about heart murmurs and they had a sound sample being that almost like a heartbeat, which is not what I’m hearing.

Any ideas? Is it bad for me to lie on my left side when I’m sleeping, pressing on the neck?

2

Moderator’s note:

I want to interject that all anyone will able to offer is opinions–and they’ll be opinions of strangers. They haven’t examined you and you don’t know their qualifications.

Nothing can substitute for the diagnosis of a doctor who’s actually examined you in person.

It’s a caveat worth repeating here. People can offer opinions and ideas, but they shouldn’t be taken as anything more than that.

TVeblen,
for the SDMB

3

Oh, I’m completely aware of that, but thanks :slight_smile:

I’m basically hoping that someone has heard of something like this, knows someone with something similar going on just so that, since what I’m experiencing seems to be slightly different than I’ve heard described, I make sure that I’m not missing anything.

I know that anything said would not substitute for a doctor’s advice, I’m just curious.