vernon123

I am posting this new topic in hopes that I can share my problem with as many victims of rare ear disorders as possible. Four months ago, I suffered a severe trauma to my left ear. It was struck by an open hand. At the time, there was impacted wax inside as well as mineral oil. The wax and oil were impelled into my ear drum, rupturing it. My life has been a living hell ever since. Initially, I suffered from a perforated ear drum, middle and outer ear infection. Three weeks later, most of my hearing returned. Two months later, the perforation healed. Despite this progress, I continue to suffer from the maddening symptoms believed to be caused by eustachian tube dysfunction. For the most part, my ear feels very clogged, congested and tender. Many times, it snaps and crackles when I swallow. It feels like it can pop anytime. Some days, without warning, my ear drum violently pops back and forth when I swallow or without warning. This is so maddening and intolerable that I have had numerous nervous breakdowns and have considered self-euthanasia. Thankfully, in the last two months, these popping episodes have decreased giving me hope that I may be healing very slowly. In the mean time, my life has been brought to a standstill. I have lost a good job, having to move back to my family. The only activity I enjoy is sleeping. Every waking hour, I am tormented by the maddening discomfort in my ear. I dread going anywhere for fear that I would encounter noisy environments making my ear feel worse. What really appalls me is how the medical community has reacted to my condition. Every doctor I have seen (Three GP s and Three ENTs) don't seem to realize how much I am suffering. This is easy since I am not suffering from a life threatening condition. Untill now, I took little notice of stories about people suffering from rare, unrecognized conditions believing that "It always happens to someone else.". Now, I would like to share my experience with anyone else with a similar condition. So far, I have tried Dimetapp and Sudafed. These drugs produced very little difference in the discomfort. In fact, the Dimetapp seemed to make the popping episodes increase. Upon stopping Dimetapp, the popping episodes stopped for awhile. My doctor put me on a twelve day course of Prednisone. This made me feel very irritable and sickly. Again, this barely made any difference. The biggest mistake was taking paxil for my resultant depression. This caused a very irritable twitching inside my ear. I have now stopped taking it and am not taking any drug at the moment. My only hope is that this condition slowly resolves on it's own over the next year. Hope to hear from anyone enduring a similar experience.