Last Thursday, I was reading the Dope at home when I suddenly noticed a hiss-whine in my left ear, like a dentist’s drill heard at a distance. Sudden onset of tinnitus can mean “OMG you’ve got a brain aneurysm and you’re gonna die!” but the doctor at the walk-in clinic shrugged, was rather blase about it, and said “I dunno, maybe the Advil caused it.” I’ve got a hearing test scheduled tomorrow, but that’s about it.
Anyone else have to put up with this annoyance? Know anyone who got it and it went away? Any fancy or interesting causes? How do you deal with it? Any interesting side-effects or permanent hearing loss? The doctor I saw, peered in my ears and from the outside and said it looks "normal’, but disinterestedly mused “Well, it could be an inner ear infection. Come back if you get dizzy or experience vertigo.”
Please note: I’m not looking for medical advice, I’m taking care of that via medical professionals. I’m more interested in interesting anecdotes. Particularly anecdotes that say “Yes, yes, it went away on its own and never bothered me again!” But addressing the obvious question in case anyone was wondering: no, there was no loud music or loud noise prior to the tinnitus. I don’t like loud stuff and often wear earplugs to movies and concerts. It does sound similar to the buzzing of a threshold shift though.
I can’t access the SDMB from work, so I can’t contribute to threads during the day.
Well in myhallucinations thread I mention that I have had tinnitus on and off most of my life. I get two distinct types, one that sounds like many people marching, and one that sounds like random tones from a hearing test. The marching one I had most of my early life, I heard it anytime I lay still especially at night. I refered to it as my “night armies” and at that time it was a very soothing sound. I am not quite sure when it went away, sometime in year or so after I had tonsilectomy, adenenoidectomy and miringotomy (ear tubes) at age 6. (It was the 70’s it seems like the solution for everything was tonsils out; ear tubes in).
Of course after that time period I was getting my hearing tested frequently, and around the same time I would start to hear the same pitches that hearing tests used, but at random times.
I never really told anyone about them until I was about 12 and I read about tinnitus in one of my mom’s magazines, like Woman’s Day or Chatelaine, or something. I then looked tinnitus up in the dictionary and encyclopedia, realized that it was what I had and basically have lived with it on and off ever since. In fact I just read the tinnitus page on wikipedia, its more than I knew, but pretty much captures my experiences. I pretty much outgrew it, but it recurrs from time to time. When I have ear infections it always gets worse, as does having a migrane. Having background noise usually minimizes the impact.
Mine is mild, I think. I know some people suffer greatly from it, and I am sure that sudden onset tinnitus would be unnerving.
Isn’t the “people marching” one a bad thing? I got tinnitus during a course of antibiotics and my GP said at the time not to worry about it unless it was “pulsative” because that could be a neurological really bad thing.
In any case, my tinnitus (I called it my Spider Sense because it sort of buzzed and made me think of the graphic in the comic) went away shortly after the antibiotic course ended. I don’t remember how much longer it lasted though.
What you experienced sounds like something that would happen after a loud noise. I’m aware of my own tinnitus after loud noise, or in very quiet surroundings. It is constant though, there are no sudden rushes of hiss, although after loud noise the constant sound is a lot more noticeable and almost distracting.
If you watched Lost, there were a couple of episodes where I think they captured the effects of tinnitus very well (the viewer ‘heard’ what/the way the character was hearing after an explosion).
There is no cure. If it doesn’t go away on its own, you own it. Mine is aggravated by taking OTC painkillers. Whenever some jerk goes by with his music shaking the ground, I think “just wait, asshole”.
Mine is a constant high-pitched background whine, like an aging CRT television or monitor.
On the plus side, the tinnitus drowns out that annoying squeal from old CRTs
But seriously folks…mine is constant with no variation so it’s very easy to ignore most of the time. It only really bugs me if I’m trying to enjoy certain music, like classical with lots of strings.
I was minding my own business at work sitting at my desk two days after Christmas in 1997 when my ears popped and the ringing started. It has never gone away even for a moment. I have trained my mind to focus on the other sounds around me to help ignore the constant ringing. Sometimes it is very difficult and I become very depressed and pissed off, how can something never, ever stop? My “sound” is a high pitched ring that varies in intensity from very minor to volume up to 11 that almost drowns out regular sound.
Yeah, that’s what happened to me. When I was a teen I listened to a lot of music with headphones very, very loud as well as operating nosy machinery without any ear protection. The result is tinnitus and a 40% hearing loss in the upper frequency range. Its funny when somebody blows a whistle on TV, I can’t hear that frequency at all.
These guys in the shaking cars are fools. Tinnitus is really insidious for once you have it most likely it’s forever.
Mine is a high-pitched background whine, too, but slightly modulated in volume by my heartbeat. I only notice it when paying attention to it, so I don’t.
Very occasionally (once or twice a year) I get a high-volume whine; it goes away after I push strongly with a finger against the outer ear (pushing the antitragus into the ear canal) and rub vigorously back and forth for a minute or so.
Once I got a loud tinnitus that apparently was due to an accumulation of earwax (I had worked in a dusty workshop for weeks); it went away immediately after the ear was washed out by an ENT doctor.
That’s what mine has been like since my late teens. I still sometimes cock my head, trying to figure out why my LCD monitor is squealing.
I’m currently experiencing pulsatile tinnitus, where I can “hear” my whooshing heartbeat (it’s from an inner ear infection). Now THAT has been pretty annoying.
I’ve had tinnitus since I was 11 (I’m 28). I have no clue why it started (I didn’t listen to loud music at all) but I’m so used to it now, it doesn’t bother me. When it’s really quiet, I can even hear multiple different ringing tones; it’s kind of cool.
I was driving down the road one day when my left ear suddenly “closed up” and sounded muffled, as though I’d gotten water in it. Part of my scalp had been tender so I figured it was an ear infection, which a trip to my doctor confirmed. Two weeks and a round of antibiotics later I felt fine, but my hearing was still diminished and there remained a constant high-pitched ringing/white-noise hiss.
I saw two more ear specialists who said there was no sign of infection and nothing visibly wrong with my ear. Audiometry confirmed a moderate hearing loss. The last specialist said his best guess was that it was nerve damage caused by the infection, and that while there was a possibility it would improve, it was likely to be permanent. A traditional hearing aid wasn’t an option, because amplifying the sound just made it more distorted— a lot like a blown speaker. Learn to live with it, basically.
That was just over twenty years ago, and it never improved nor worsened. The pitch normally remains constant, with occasional brief fluctuations. I normally don’t notice it. The distortion, though, is sometimes problematic; when out with people I have to sit so that my “good” ear is positioned toward whoever I want to hear (or opposite whoever I don’t). Loud rooms with a lot of ambient noise are physically uncomfortable.
One interesting side effect is an occasional flash of synaesthesia: sometimes, in a very quiet room (often while trying to fall asleep) any sudden loud noise will cause a brilliant checkerboard-like pattern to burst into my field of vision. That, and it’s occasionally useful to have a half-bad ear to turn away from the pillow if, for example, I find myself in a noisy hotel without earplugs.
Back in 2000, I started hearing my pulse in my right ear. I’ve had an MRI and a CAT scan done of my head and neck and nothing seems to show any reason for this to be happening.
I’m pretty sure it’s vascular. It gets worse if I don’t have caffeine, and I can make it go away completely by pressing on the right side of my neck or tilting my head in certain directions (and certain other directions make it worse). But nobody’s been able to figure out why it happens. Sometimes, like now, I don’t notice it at all. It’s worse when I’m lying down than when I’m sitting or standing.
I expect at any moment whatever has been lying dormant in my head for 10 years will explode. Just hope I die quickly when it happens.
Mine started when taking aminosalycilates. The ringing is pretty constant, and will get much less noticeable if I stop taking them, but I need them, so I don’t stop.
I had a hearing test and according to the doc my range is pretty normal for my age (36). So, no hearing loss, just ringing.
I’ve had tinnitus for about 30 years now. I don’t know what initiated it, but it might have been a particularly bad case of the flu.
It’s a high pitched whine, with two discordant notes, in both ears. Generally the right ear is a bit louder, but not much. Sometimes it’s annoyingly loud, sometimes it’s faint, but it never goes away entirely. It’s fainter if I’m well rested. A few days of taking aspirin will ramp it up.
For the most part, I just let it be. It’s the sort of thing that’ll drive you crazy if you focus on it, so I don’t. Occasionally it gets loud enough that it significantly interferes with my hearing, at which times it’s obviously harder to ignore.
The only thing I ever did to try to alleviate it was masking. Didn’t work; the tinnitus didn’t like being one-upped, and just got louder.
I’m 62, and have had tinnitus for about six or seven years.
When I first noticed it I mentioned it to my doctor during my annual physical and he sent me to a specialist for tests. They ran a bunch of tests, confirmed that I had Tinnitus, and told me to come back in a year for more tests.
I asked them what could be done to fix it and they said “nothing”. I asked why they were going to run more tests in a year and they told me that by running new sets of tests every year we would have good measurements of the accumulating damage. I asked again “but what are we going to do to fix it?” and they told me again “there’s nothing that can be done to fix it.”
I never went back, and I have to report that I don’t have any good measurements of the accumulating damage. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that I still have ringing in my ears.
Oh yes, to respond to the OP: n my case it’s a constant whining noise. I believe it’s always there, but I don’t notice it when I’m concentrating on other things. It’s sort of like breathing in a way: I do it constantly, but most of the time I don’t notice it.
While in college, it was SO cool to go to rock concerts and rush the stage and stand right in front of one of the amps, so that you could actually feel the music. Heh heh. I have had the non-modulating high-pitched whine for years, I don’t even notice it till something calls my attention to it (like this thread). If it changed tone at all, I think it would drive me crazy. It doesn’t seem to interfere at all with hearing, though my right ear has some loss in it from those concerts (The Doors! The Who!) and headphone use. Here’s an interesting thing–I spend a lot of time paddling a kayak on a very peaceful river. The tinnitus disappears while paddling. This was very puzzling for a long time until I discovered that it isn’t that it disappears, it’s that it blends perfectly with the ambient sound–it is precisely the same tone as the crickets and the water dripping off the paddle, both of which I can hear just fine, so it seems to be completely gone and I have the impression that I am only hearing the surrounding sounds.
