Ever since I can remember (and I'm remembering being in the crib and experiencing this) I have had this really,really odd sensation. I always thought it was normal until I got older and realized everyone thought I was crazy when I described it. Anyway, you know how you get shivers that run up and down your spine when someone runs a finger along your spine, or blows on your neck..or whatever makes that happen to you? Well, since I was born every time I heard more noise in my right ear rather than my left (ie, my right ear was closer to the noise source, like a telephone for example) it would cause this shivering, and that shivering of course causes me to temporarily twitch my whole body. As a child there were nights I couldn't sleep because of it. All I had to do was even THINK about it and it would happen. I can still do that today. I've learned to just not think about it, and I've just learned to do things to avoid having this problem. I only listen to the telephone in my left ear. I avoid headphones for the most part, but otherwise they have to be perfectly equal or louder in the left ear than the right. I sit on the right side of classrooms, churches, cars, etc so that the voices, music, etc would be directed towards my left ear. It's not at all painful, but really weird. When I have hearing tests done it is dreadfully annoying, and I usually end up scaring the audiologist because they have no idea what is happening to me. I was even sent to get checked to see if I had a brain tumor!

I just wonder though if this congenital problem has also caused my ear fullness/pressure that I have experienced constantly for the past 7 years. Just one day the pressure built up in one ear, like it was water-clogged, and no matter what ENT's I saw, my hearing is perfect and there is no fluid behind the drum. I again learned to deal with it and accept it, until recently when I had an extreme flare up and this time my whole neck/jaw/face started hurting, muscles started spasming, vertigo...constant headaches..and I was finally diagnosed with TMJD. That's all fine, I now have a splint, this will help with the frequent headaches and the jaw popping and maybe some of the ear fullness (a common complaint) but I seriously think there's more to it. Because unlike other TMJD sufferers, my ear pressure problem doesn't come and go when my TMJ decides to act up. It's been there constantly for the past 7 years. It just flares up worse at times like now and becomes unbearable. I don't remember what it is like to hear or breathe normally. My sinuses are bad too.

Do you think these seemingly two different problems (both impossible to diagnose by any MD I've been to) are related? Could I possibly have a neuroma or some other nerve dysfunction? I would appreciate any insight! While the first problem is of lesser consequence to me (I've never known anything else) the latter has been keeping me from work and everything else, at least when it flares up. I am desperate to find a solution, or at least a name for whatever it is that I have.

thanks, everyone.

Michelle