I had an awful (I believe a deliberately awful) root canal on a rear bottom molar (tooth #31) where the sadistic dentist pushed the root of the tooth into the IA nerve on 10-12-2016. Severe pain, on heavy opiates and Tegretol 18 months, diagnosed with Trigeminal Neuralgia. In January of 2017 after 1st MRI, head/neck doc tells me I have a tiny AN 0.8 close to right ear, just above faulty root canal, she said it was a "fly speck" and almost missed it but referred me to a surgeon who told me of CK which I read about side-effects and declined, hoping AN would stay small or go away.. After 6 months of lightning bolts on my lower jaw, I went for nerve block surgery in April 2017 with a 32 year old rookie doctor who had never done one. Severe tinnitus in recovery room right after surgery. So the tinnitus started 4 months after the AN diagnosis. Please remember this.
I have had repeat MRIs in 2018, 2019, 2020, all show the AN growing slightly by 0.2 mm a year. Last year it was 1.6x1.8x1.6. Last year right as the Pandemic was getting started, the neurosurgeon phones me and in a melodramatic voice tells me this is my LAST CHANCE to get CK or else I'd have to get the radical surgery which will leave me deaf at least in the right ear, 30% chance in left ear. I was all set to drive 4 1/2 hours to get CK then drive home but then lockdown orders came and I got afraid of some complication occurring from CK that would make me go to ER often. The head/neck surgeon gave me Ofloxacin 0.3% for the severe tinnitus in 2017. It helped greatly. But tinnitus was intermittent then. Now tinnitus is constant in right ear, a tiny bit in left ear sometimes.
After 3 years of using Ofloxacin 0.3 and OTC tinnitus drops and every sort of OTC drug that could help with "ring relief" I get my first ever episode of VERTIGO around May of 2020, I fell back on bed, eyes in a left/right REM, weird. The 1st episode was not completely gone for 7 days. It felt like I was on a small fishing boat in the middle of the ocean during a storm. In my opinion, it has to be the inner ear upset from the ear drops, right? I never mentioned it to doctors as I thought they'd stop the OFloxacin 0.3%. I had 2nd episode on Christmas Eve but this one, though scary, lasted only 1-2 hours and gone. Yesterday, 2-1-2021, I get up at 4:30 a.m. to use the bathroom and I'm falling down, scary for a 63 year old man who needs hip and knee replacements, those surgeries postponed due to pandemic by Kaiser HMO. I could not focus my eyes. The tiny green light on smoke detector looked like it was flying across the room. I went back to bed and went to sleep, hoping it would be gone when I got up at 8:45 am. It wasn't. I called ambulance, I dared not drive to ER. They took my vitals, said I was OK, and to ride it out or call UBER to go to ER. MRI next week, I am terrified of CK or surgery causing me to be deaf. Now, as expected, the docs are saying the VERTIGO is from the AN, not the ear drops. Thank you to any who reply to this, hope it isn't too long. Joe
