Hello friends. I will not repeat myself with the story because whoever reads this already knows me (I guess). I will make a summary. So, I had a SSHL on the 7th of March 2025. Medrol failed (few rounds). My last audiogram is in my profile. It looks like my first audiogram when I lost my hearing in my right ear. Funny ah? I had better days due to steroids but now, is at it was on 7 March. Well like a month ago I start to have a dull pain in my ear and I had a sudden drop in hearing. I was scared so I was to an audiologist to make a new audiogram to have it ready when I meet my ENT. When she stuck the camera inside my ear she told me: of course your hearing is worse, you have some liquid in there, that’s why the pain. Go get some treatment and when you return we will make an audiogram. Ok, I did some rounds of antibiotics (standard practice in here), some nose sprays, some Valsava and I suppose it went away. I returned, took the new audiogram (the one in my profile) and finally my day at the ENT came (1 September 2025). I was there mainly to renew my papers for the MRI. In my country is available 3 months, then you must go to the doctor (when they put you on a list to see him long up to 3 week to a month) to renew it. So is a lot of synchronisation work while you hope the phone will ring and call you to the MRI. I finally made it to the doctor, she renewed my MRI papers and I told her, I start to feel pain. What should I do? The audiologist told me I had liquid in there. She was like: yeah I believe you is hurting. Let me check. She used her otoscope, then a tunning forque: can you hear it here? me: yes, can you hear it here? me: yes: etc.. Yeah, you don’t have liquid. Is ok! Just take your Betaserc. Now keep in mind in my country may take up to a till your turn comes for a MRI or a CT scan. I’m on the waiting list 3 months and a week in. The problem is just from yesterday my head start to hurt like a lot. Today I missed work. I had huge pain in my ear, I had stabbing like sharp pain in my deaf ear. I made some Valsava maneuver and the air is flowing good. I hear noises in there like something moving from time to time (not the usual tinnitus due to hearing loss). The dull pain is still there but now those sharp pains are debilitating. What is that guys? I cannot take it anymore! Maybe they will find out at the autopsy! What should I do? We have an emergency room, but I already been there like a few months ago when a sharp pain in my neck and ear made me faint. They made me some Tramadol (a painkiller) and they sent me home. I mean.. there is no point in getting there. The medical system in my country is so corrupt, if you have no money to go the private way you are doomed. And you may say: this is what you get for not working! I work! In my country they take you like 47% from your income. You never see the money. 10% goes to the state health insurance. That system that is sending you home, giving you wrong diagnosis and when it takes up to a year to make a MRI or a CT scan. When it takes up to a month to see a specialist. Please did anyobody went through this? I don’t know what to believe anymore. I started to believe I have ear cancer or something. On the other hand I read is pretty rare. Like 6 cases in a million of inner and middle ear cancer. (I exclude the outer ear because the ENT just seen my ear chanal). I cannot do this anymore. I’m so tired of everything. My head is hurting, my ear is hurting, I can’t hear well, the boss at the job had enough of me, I barely sleep 3 hours/night because blasting tinnitus and now some new symptoms like some brain zaps or something. I feel like electric current from my deaf ear to the good ear passing fast with a bzzzz sound and like electric current is passing through me. I don’t know. I’m very scared, I’m very alone in this, nobody is telling me anything, doctors don’t care, people don’t understand me nor care. What I did wrong I don’t know. 
P.S. tested my hearing with Mimi App usually my bad ear is stuck at 23 dB (actual audiogram 36dB loss, is missing a lot in the bass, I read about this in a study), now the funny things is I hear better since the stabbing pain started, is at 18dB on mimi app!
I wonder if maybe fluid has formed behind your eardrum again. Maybe the antibiotics were not specific enough for whatever bacteria are responsible? Or maybe it’s a virus. I’m really sorry you’re having so much trouble. If you went to the Emergency Room, would they give you a different antibiotic? Or, how soon could you see a doctor again?
They don’t care man! I just went to the ENT and told her I have pain, and she was like: “yeah I know ..I know” like is something normal. She looked inside my ear with an otoscope and she tested my hearing placing a tuning fork in forehead (I heard the sound from both ears, which is a first time for me), then on my left mastoid bone (I heard the sound, another first for me, before that it was dead), then next to my left ear, asked me if I hear it, I said yes, and she was like: “yeah you have no liquid in your middle ear”. “Take your Betaserc, and when you have the MRI come and let’s see what’s what”. Simple as that! In the emergency room they don’t interfere with chronic conditions. As I said, some months ago I was @ work and I felt a stabbing pain in my neck, was so strong I fainted. The people in there called the ambulance. After 6 hours staying on their chairs full of bacteria and viruses, someone came to me and asked me what’s what. They wanted to send me to a cardiologist. I said: noooo has nothing to do with that, I’m 100%, send me to an ENT, has something to do with my hearing loss and my ear”. They believed me so they sent me to the ENT. The doctor there asked me some things, looked inside my nose, my throat while I was telling her about my hearing loss and my doctor. She told me: “I don’t care, nor can I interfere with Ms. R. your doctor, I’m just interested why you fainted”. She considered everything looked good, they took some blood and did some tests (basic ones) everything came back fine, they made me a Tramadol (a painkiller like an opiate) for the pain and they sent me home. Brother this is Romania. Not some decent country. They make fun of you! Simple as that. They don’t care. The only thing they care about are their salaries and the money made. When I took the antibiotics the pain went away, but as you said I suspect more viral infection. Guess what! Today I had better hearing than ever! 
I’m so happy. Sure, is weird with all that pain in my ear but I can clearly hear the sound better. The mimi apps show improvement but I have some other kind of improvement (a far better one). The diplacusis disharmonica is less now (hearing different pitches of the same sound with different ears). The pure sine tones I use at home for testing are clear! Not distorted as before! It is the first time I listened to music in soooo many months! It is fantastic! I’m 7 months in since I lost my hearing, yet despite my ear pain, clearly my hearing is better! I bet the loss can be reversed but I don’t have the right people. I plan to go to my G.P. and ask her what I should take. If i schedule me to a specialist, it will take up to a month. I already visited 2 of them. If I go to my main one I already know the answer “I bet it hurst, you have nothing in your middle ear, bring the MRI”, the second one sent me after a CT scan which of course I’m on a long long list to make it (same as for MRI up to a year). Is it possible for a viral infection to last like 7 monts? I looked it up on the internet and they say ear infection usually lasts around 2 weeks and then goes away. I disagree though. One month in since I have the dull pain. A few days since I have had sharp stabbings, yet the good part is my hearing is slowly returning. Finally, I had some clear bass notes! Man, I missed that bass. Can be late Covid? Over one year almost two I had Covid. Man was bad I almost died; I’m not even joking. I remember back then having the hearing affected. The ENT asked me from our first meeting if I had Covid and I said yes but not in the pandemic, but after, when it wasn’t cool anymore. She told me it is a possibility for the virus to stay dormant in there and mess with my inner ear. Another weird thing is, at my workplace I have a coworker missing for a month or so. I asked what’s wrong with him and they told me has some “equilibrium problems”. They are too stupid to know is the same “inner ear” problem in him also. But that was that very guy that shared his covid with us and got us ill in the first place. So yes, what are the odds right? He affected the vestibular (equilibrium) part more, and in my case went for my cochlea. I do have some mild dizziness, but my problem is hearing. Also was the first time in an extraordinarily long time without tinnitus for me! How about that! I’m so upset because I feel it is something treatable, but I don’t have the specialist or the good-hearted doctor to help me. They are all stuck at “images” and they ignore everything I complain about
Well, at least your hearing has improved! I think you should get the MRI when it’s finally your turn - at least you’ll be able to show the ENT the images. Maybe besides proving compliance with the treatment plan, it’ll actually help diagnose (or at least rule out) the causes of all this pain and hearing changes. How frustrating, though!
Finally they programmed me at MRI. 3 Tesla. In a week I go and I will see what’s inside. I’m so scared. I was upset when they postponed it for so long but now when is on, is very scary.
Make sure they provide dual hearing protection! Something like:
PLUS
earmuffs.
I understand. It’s better to find out how things are, though, rather than wonder about it. Make sure they give you earplugs and cupped headphones to protect your ears!
Finally today I took the MRI. It was a 3 Tesla resolution machine. I don’t know when the results will be ready, but they posted the images on a server right away. Now I’m not an expert but I browsed through them to look for big tumors. It was a contrast one, so I tried to look for inconsistencies. Also, I used AIs on the images. Funny how grok AI turned out fairly good at detailing some aspects. Of course, the ideal is to post all the images, but it is impossible for me to upload like 185 sequences of my cranium. I uploaded the sequences that looked suspicious to my untrained eye. Then I uploaded some images from the internet with very discreet tumors and other problems to test the Ai, and they detected the problem right away, so I hope they were good also when studying my MRI images. Man that thing was loud. Like super loud. They gave me some headphones, but they were earbuds, and I refused to fit them because they are not have been sterilized. It sucked. It took like 50 minutes. It was terrible. I started to understand my “ear pain” might be a more complex problem. Neurological in nature. If the MRI comes clear, I have some sort of other problems. Like neuralgia or cervicogenic headaches I don’t know but clearly the trigeminal nerve is in, the glossopharyngeal nerve is in, occipital nerve is hurting also, I noticed trigger points near the base of my skull on my sternocleidomastoid and trapezius muscles. They hurt like hell. Specially when I press the point under the ear behind the jaw of the sternocleidomastoid the pain is oddly similar with what I feel in my ear day by day. Also I might have a TMJ problem. It may be a more complex problem. Sure one and only did what it did and I bet is related to my SSHL also but I think is more neurological in nature.
MRI clear! Well at least I had a stone off my chest. My MRI is clear. Absolutely no problem.
The crappy news is I still have pains, and nobody knows the cause. I noticed people going deaf or losing a few dB here and there don’t have pain, yet I do have. I’m very discouraged. This is not life.
I understand. I have chronic pain myself, and it is frustrating.
I’m glad your MRI doesn’t show any nasty abnormalities! I certainly hope your doctor has an idea what it is that’s causing this!
So you have pain in the ear that lost hearing? This is what happened to me. A few months after I had the sudden hearing loss, I started feeling something. Like something is inflamed and is hurting inside my ear. I know that inner ear (cochlea) doesn’t hurt, so I suppose it was the middle ear. I think it was a virus of some sort because after that my ear started to build up fluid. I read once that if a middle ear infection (as in my case) follows a sudden hearing loss a few months in, most likely was a virus, and is moving. Si like having a runny nose but in your middle ear. In 44 years never had such a problem. Since then, it has become even more painful. Is a constant dull pain on the right side of my head. Behind my ear, my occipital area, in the temple, at the base of the skull. I noticed stabbing like sensation from time to time. Because of symptomatology I was scared and sure about something “growing” inside my boss skull. Now no more liquid but my audiogram the on in my right side is a little bit worse than when I lost some of my hearing. I’m sure the doctor has nothing to tell me for the 3 main reasons. 1. In here (and in many places) they don’t care about you. My last visit on 1 September when I was complaining about the pain led to an “Yeah I believe it hurts”.. And that was that. 2. Usually, I do my homework reading excessively about a subject and when I end up in there many times, I suggest my medication. The ENT visits were no exception. In fact, I was asked in my country if I was a student or worked in the health department. 3. They don’t really know the cause. When I say they I say the human race, the tech we have. Now that I described my pain and everything, can you tell me how it is yours? Was SSHL related?
No, my chronic pain has nothing to do with my ears. I have multilevel spinal stenosis with nerve root damage as a result.
