your ear
 

HI there, I just wanted to find out if you ever found out what was going on with your ear and what happened with your CT scan.
Hope all is well..

I had this problem during (dare I mention it ) 1989 and got to the point that I would carefully re arrange pillows so that I would have my ear in the hollow bit! After the dust settled and I was flying OS the problem went away.... read into that what you will, but stress cetainly played a part...

Hi Jill,on a positive note I am pleased to say the Scan didn't find anything sinister.
However I can still hear the pulse in my ear, not as bad as it used to be due to the fact I am getting used to it plus it genuinely appears fainter (doesn't affect my sleep anymore as I sleep opposite side with a fan on to give a little background noise. It did affect my hearing test slightly in the offending ear but I was within limits.
It seems worse after night flights, long days, hangovers etc so it could be stress related or connected to BP I suppose, anyway thanks for your concern,take care,Pudd.

Ear noise
 

Hi there, I'm so relieved to find this thread. I have terrible heartbeat noises in my right ear and have been to my 3rd specialist today. The low down is that in one of my many millions of arteries near my ear, the blood flow is turbulent causing me to hear this. There is no cure - the specialist talked me through quite how many layers of skull, brain and everything else he'd have to go through to block it off and even then how would he locate the exact artery that was causing the noise? I came away very depressed. I now have to somehow live with the noise. At the moment I don't sleep because it keeps me awake and I have been on sleeping pills for just over a week, since it started happening at night. It's just reassuring to know I'm not the only one. I think a fan at night might be the way forward, anything to stop me hearing the heartbeat.

Juliet. Just don't worry. Forget the damn fan and just live with the rhythm. In a while it will become a friend you'd miss if it went away.

I was distraught when I was diagnosed with tinnitus at age c 35. Well, when they told me there was no treatment. After a while it was insignificant.

It's probable that tinnitus is generated in the brain. The ear gets damaged, and the brain turns up the volume to compensate for the sensory hairs that are failing to produce sound. It makes a lot of sense to an electronics engineer, but no help to the sufferer.

Hey, I'll tell you what. Tinnitus is not as bad as daftness. I started reading this thread, and in a moment constructed an answer in me brain about my wife. It wasn't until I reached a post by one, Loose rivets, that I realized I'd already written it. So long ago, and the memory of poking that thing into the Rivetess' ear was like it was yesterday. Oh, my.:uhoh:

The comment about the GP was very real. He was a troubled soul who would, on principal, refuse to believe anything any member of my family said. The point being, seeing that 'spray' of blood vessels was very, very difficult to do, and I wouldn't be surprised if several GPs failed to get the darn things in focus.

So, my post is clearly divided into three parts. One is tinnitus that is neurological, the next is a very definite vascular structure that is almost certainly causal. The third part means that all you have to do is make sure there's not a problem that needs skilled intervention right away. Get a referral to a specialist, but be 99.999999% sure nothing is going to be found.

LR
What you say about this GP reminds me of a consultation I had with mine of many years ago. In this case it was my eye rather than my ear. At a routine eye test for new specs the optician noticed something he thought should be investigated and gave me a letter for my GP. The GP had a good look at my eye and confessed that he couldn't see anything untoward but he would refer me to a specialist just in case. His reasoning being "your optician spends all day, every day' looking at eyes and if he saw something unusual then it should be checked by a consultant".

I was duly examined by a specialist and the optician was right.

Do you still have the same GP? I hope not!

Thank you
 

Hi Loose Rivets, thank you for replying. I do hope to get used to this one day. Right now it feels like the end of the world - I used to be able to sleep at the drop of a hat, and now I dread bed time. I hate being anywhere quiet, and thankfully now the weather has perked up, I can sit in the garden and listen to outside noises which completely override the noise in my ear. I can't quite see it being a friend yet but maybe I'll pop back to this thread when I do and offer some help to someone else!

Back again
 

Back again and no further on in my quest. The GP prescribed me 'beta blockers' to try and deal with the pressure obviously going on in my arteries, but he simply wanted me out of his surgery, and they were horrible. He was so uninterested. So I went to a different GP who was lovely. She listened and had actually read my notes which was more than the last GP. Sadly though she too has prescribed me anti-depressants which have hideous side effects, including anxiety and sleeplessness. She's said these are short term just until I can get to a tinnitus retraining clinic and she can think of another specialist that I can go and see. To be honest, I think I'm so stressed that no-one is going to sort this out. By the end of it all I'll need counselling! What they don't realise is that I'm only depressed because of the noise. I can't sleep. Simple as that. And soon the sleeping pills will stop being prescribed. It's very difficult to go to work on no sleep.

Hi, I understand what you are going through.. it's very frustrating, I thought mine was stress related as I was overworking at the time,my Doctor told me that my original scan was clear,my noise/pulse went away and became less frequent, anyway after having a scan for a more serious matter (unconnected by the way) the Doctors discovered that I have a high riding jugular vein/bulb? which is probably the cause of my occasional problems.
Mine went away and returned less frequently,BP is now normal,pulse is low and I still get it.. no set reason that I can find apart from their explanation.
Try and not focus on this,avoid meds, exercise to relax if you can and do use a fan on low setting to cancel out the noise, it worked for me and I really don't even think about it now, in time you will get used to it, good luck, Pudd

Juliet--Just read your post and am wondering if you still hear your heart beating in your right ear. I have had this problem for 2-3 years with no let up. My cardiologist says lots of people have that. Maybe I just have to get adjusted to it. Just got on this form and I hate to say it, but made me feel better to know other people have the same problem. Hoping to hear from you. Janet