Shakey Mo's thread of misery

merle's good company

that's kinda weird what you said about that pressure feeling in yr ear. no idea what it means though, lol

~it is a mystery~

once i had this crackling in my ear for like a week, every time i moved my head or swallowed. i had an appointment with an audiologist anyway (for ear plugs) and it turns out i had a hair stuck right against my ear drum, so it was acting like a piece of paper against a speaker. she went in with her little camera and tweezers and i was all good.

wow

when I put weight down on the balls of my feet and cocked my head to the right, I heard this weird balloon-rubbing sort of sound in my left ear (the one with the tinnitus). It didn't change the tinnitus, but it did it with every step I took. It felt like some weird circulation/pressure thing trying to work itself out.

That definitely sounds like something physical going on maybe in the eustachean tubes. Almost like whenm you get water in the ears after swimming! I assume all that's been investigated already though? (like in-ear obstructions and etc?)

I know what you mean by it tho - i often get odd noises of all kinds in my head from pressure changes/pops/head tilts/jaw cracks. I guess Ive got used to having a noisy head! :|

Like for eg if I tip myself upside down (say if I did a handstand or bent over) my head FILLS with a high pressure swooshing, noisy blood-moving-round noise.

yeah ENT's checked me out twice, as has an audiologist and they've said my ears are fine - no fluid, blockages, infections, etc. (I am still waiting to get an MRI)

I do have a history of weird sinus things and the physical aspect of this has really mystified me. like if it was just my brain/hearing problems, why does my ear physically feel different? who knows

fwiw I noticed a very subtle similar creaking/balloon-rubbing sort of sound several times in my left ear that corresponded to my walking gait a couple months prior to this happening

maybe it's not related, I dunno

u shd start documenting them and give yr notes to the doctor for yr next appointment, in case there's any pattern

there are sinuses they can only see on MRI so maybe something is going on in one of them. would be sort of unlikely but this whole thing has been so strange

when I told the ENT about feeling like my left ear's pressure was off/unbalanced he was pretty much just "eh, we don't really understand how these nerves work exactly, could be psychosomatic" etc.

God I hate specialists. They can be so dismissive. Mine was dreadful, he told me off for mispronouncing "tinnitus", he was brusque and spoke way too fast and acted like it was NBD to go over complicated surgery discussions. He might do it every day but I bloody dont! Waste of $300 if you ask me. (tho having a fibreoptic camera run up my nose and down my throat and seeing it in full colour on TV was awesome).

he was sympathetic to my sufferin, but I think he was dismissive of anything he couldn't actually see

but yeah I feel you

I'm gonna be better one day goddammit

I got your back dude. It'll happen.

had a weird night's sleep - only took one trazadone and half an ambien (the smallest amt of drugs I've taken to sleep in maybe a month). I know I slept cuz I had dreams but seemed like I was waking up every hour or two

Waylon Jennings today. stuff with a background of clean acoustic guitar strumming seems good lately.

i approve of yr tinnitus playlist so far

I listened to Dolly's two recent bluegrass albums a shit-ton this week. more stuff that sounds like that needed, I guess

another day with this bullshit

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/living-with-a-sound-you-can%E2%80%99t-turn-off/

yeah I saw that. Kaiser not really offering me anything like that, unfortunately altho were I Dutch I would be seeking that guy's team out...

I feel at least psychologically I'm coping a little better. sleep is fitful but I feel like I'm on a semi-regular routine and def much better off the zoloft. yesterday I went to a craft fair with my mom and the wife and daughter and being in in a crowded space like that with a lot of low-level background noise was helpful for distracting me from the tinnitus ... unfortunately the stress of the tinnitus has resulted in me having random shoulder pain and sinus headaches so there was still that to contend with. I am, uh, getting a lot of backrubs at least.

I was thinking about how I require constant activity/distractions now and was like, well, nothing more distracting/requiring constant attention than a baby right lol

also so yeah bluegrass and country seem to be where it's at for me sonically. shiny, well-recorded stuff (not that I don't appreciate Hank Williams or the Carter Family or a bunch of pre-1950s recordings but they contain a sonic harshness/flatness that I can't really handle right now). If anyone (Aimless?) can recommend more records that sound like Flatt & Scruggs Sing Songs of the Famous Carter Family or the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Will the Circle Be Unbroken I would much appreciate it thx

New Grass Revival?

Mr. Jaq suggests: Early Allison Krauss (anything on Rounder) or The Kentucky Colonels for a start.

gah woke up every couple hours last night, so irritating

Porter Wagoner today

when do you start the talk therapy, Shakey, or has that already begun?

I have a talking-therapy appt this Thursday - but it's just a regular therapist, not anyone that's specifically familiar with treating tinnitus. I honestly don't know what I'm going to talk about, beyond how irritating the tinnitus is. I am not someone who feels like I have a lot of issues to work out or anything tbh.

my appt with UCSF's tinnitus clinic is not until mid-January, right when the baby is due. so the odds of that being doable/helpful are a bit slim.

Kaiser basically has no support program for dealing with tinnitus. the last time I saw the audiologist it was basically "you will either get used to it, or it will go away. try not to think about it!"

thanks dude

what a bro

feel like the most sympathetic Kaiser doc I've seen has been the ENT. altho there were limits to his sympathy too. the others have all been eh what can ya do?

but I guess you don't go to doctors for sympathy right

seems worse today, probably the lack of sleep. feel like the yesterday I was coping a little better, that it wasn't as intrusive.

That's infuriating about the audiologist.

Really hope this clears up soon for you.

Whenever you go into one of those offices with a problem that ruins your quality of life but doesn't have a ready prescription you are in for some tough love. I just googled "acupuncture tinnitus" and came up with this fwiw http://dremilykane.com/2002/05/10/top-five-remedies-for-tinnitus/

I'm already gagging at the description of Eustacian Tube Drainage

"put your hand in your mouth. further. now, reach further. good. now further. if you can feel your lungs you've gone too far."

Using those Walkman-type devices with little earphones that go into the canal are particularly dangerous.

This frustrates me when I read warnings like this. Do they mean even at low volumes? Because the implication is that they'll cause damage no matter what.

I asked the audiologist about dangers of wearing my ipod in-ear headphones for like 6+ hrs a day and he said "eh as long as it's not too high a volume and you rest your ears in between a bit, not a problem"

Found another website where they were discussing that drainage section and also this gizmo: http://www.earpopper.com/

oh I've got no problem with sinus drainage stuff - had big sinus issues in the past and used them and they totally work. problem here is that I am not congested/my main sinus passages are clear. which is really weird, cuz I still feel like there's this pressure in my ear. of course, the head has a lot of sinus cavities, I suppose it's possible something got into one and has messed me up, but that would be pretty unusual/unexpected.

xp Thanks, good to know. I keep mine pretty quiet, and my earbuds are pretty uncomfortable, so I take them out for a rest anyway.

I use earbuds also, but try not to play too loud, take frequent breaks, sometimes only use one ear. Once I read something like that snippet, got scared and stopped listening but then in a few days there was a giant *pop* in one ear and I thought this is it, I've run off the cartoon cliff, looked down into the arroyo, where soon I'll be a puff of dust. But it wasn't the onset of tinnitus, just pressure from worsening allergies.

never heard of this before. sounds sort of scary (and not offered by Kaiser, of course)

Neural Therapy
An injection technique pioneered in Germany about 30 years ago, mostly for pain control. A very safe analgesic, usually 1 or 2% Procaine, is placed in specific “trigger points”. In the case of tinnitus, the trigger points will be similar to the acupuncture points, mostly around the ears. The idea is to “reset” and correct the nerve impulses which convey information from the outside world to the brain. Most doctors in the U.S. skilled in this technique were trained by Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, MD.

of course, I'm getting an MRI next week, so if that turns up anything who knows what they'll suggest

gah it never ends

Ralph Stanley and Ernest Tubb today

buddy, i feel ya - dont have tinnitus but do have some other chronic conditions i cant seem to tame no matter what, and it is really, really frustrating

yeah, I vascillate between trying to be optimistic that this will go away/I will get better and just thinking well fuck this is how things are now, guess I should just learn to cope. the latter is sort of depressing.

it'll get better. I have faith.

so last night I smoked a little weed after dinner and while being high was actually really unpleasant/irritating when I went to bed (after taking my other sleep meds) I slept continuously for way longer (6.5 hrs) than I have in months. don't know what to make of that really. tinnitus still annoying as ever.

I got it while working in a CD store, doctor drained earwax and the t. vanished, for a while. But every sound was *so* clear, ears so vulnerable without the wax and I stupidly didn't wear plugs for a while. (George Martin also wrote about messing up his waxless, naked ears with headphones and studio monitors). Nevertheless, it's never been nearly as bad, since that drainage (which I haven't yet repeated; apparently the wax can provide some protection). The first drainage was 40-odd years of wax, so maybe I'll wait another 20 or so.