u/Kevco571

Just wondering if anyone has a constant feeling of a dull earache with this condition? Like a brutal dull earache, almost like ear infection feeling? And worse when pressure is applied?

Hi all. I have a long history of tinnitus. It started 15 years ago with two very bad ear infections. It has fluctuated over the years from barely audible to very loud. When it first started, I also had a couple of months of bad sound sensitivity that eventually went away.

Fast forward to last summer. I was going through another tinnitus flare up, but I was also experiencing muffled hearing. I went to an ENT at a well known hospital who ran tests and used an endoscope to look inside and saw there was a lot of mucus / fluid. He said it was ETD. Around November, the tinnitus calmed down and I wasn’t having any more issues with muffled hearing.

A couple of months ago, I had another tinnitus flare-up, and sound sensitivity followed a few weeks later. More recently, about ten days ago, I started having brutal earache pain in the same ear as the sound sensitivity. I finally went to urgent care and the doctor saw middle ear effusion on both sides and said it was again ETD. I’m taking flonase and sudafed. The tinnitus is still very loud and the sensitivity has gotten probably a bit worse. The dull earache pain has me very concerned.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this with ETD?

Does anyone have ideas for next steps rather than me going to another doctor? It’s honestly so painful to where I’ve considered the ER.