Trying to find an answer for my ongoing symptoms was not only frustrating to me but for my family. Some days, I could barely function but on the outside I appeared fine. Those days were the hardest, but it was even harder to experience this when attending an appointment to find answers for your symptoms and coming out with no answers.
I was told I was too young, overweight, don’t display enough symptoms… the list goes on but to me I continued to see an ongoing trend that led me on the wrong path to seek help for my symptoms.
I would start to drink excessively while not eating properly which brought memories of bullying that I had experienced growing up through out my years in middle school. Memories I still hadn't fully processed. It was easy to tell myself “…you’ll get through it” when I was just further injuring myself and my own mental health.
What happened one day was completely at random. I was sitting in my apartment experiencing one of my daily headaches when I thought I heard a random sound, but at that moment I had no idea what it was. Was it my computer? No. Was it the water heater? No. Then I realized it was coming from my ear, specifically my left ear. It would increase in sound if I were running, but I realized if I pressed on a certain spot on the left side of my neck the sound would cease. I described it as a constant whooshing sound. Something you would hear if you were listening to your babies first heartbeat.
This sound was never annoying and overtime (roughly over 3 years) I became used to the sound, especially at night. I could throw my headphones on and drown out the sound with my music. But throughout those years, I developed newer symptoms that would result in me laying in bed more often, feeling like the room was constantly spinning, and the inability to focus on certain tasks that I could normally complete. The sound was constant and never stopped unless, again, I would push on a certain spot on the left side of my neck.
At this point I classified it as an ongoing irritation that needed to be resolved.
Overtime, I had seen numerous ENT’s, a Vascular Surgeon…I completed an absurd amount of testing (repetitive) of CT’s, MRI’s, X-Ray’s. I would get the same answer, “…all of your scans are coming back normal”. I asked myself why would I continue to pursue this search for an answer when I was met with negative after negative experience.
I was told, again, you really need to lose weight. There was no way you could experience that type of symptom, you must be laying your head on a pillow.
That symptom was Pulsatile Tinnitus.
MRI Images (Below)
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