Hi,
I'm very glad to find this forum and this association. Reading some of the posts reassures me that I am not alone and that there is great kindness here.
I am a wait-and-watcher, finishing my second year since diagnosis. Next MRI in March. I am 61 and in great shape otherwise.
I have a 6mm AN, stable in size so far.
I chose wait-and-watch because it is small, so far, and because my ENT thinks there is more danger to my facial nerve in a procedure than there is in wait-and-watching, if I can get away with it. We'll see.
And, I've had some big successes with homeopathy for other problems and my homeopath seems quite optomistic about treating it. And, in fact, once we started homeopathy, the hearing loss stopped getting worse, the tinnitus became much less loud, the fullness in the area went away, and then there was the 1 year MRI with no growth. Also, I get this zzzzzzip thing, especially when I lay down and go to sleep that travels from my AN to my brain or something. It really relaxed that first year too.
In August, I started having a new symptom. I love to sing and, at first, just one note would make a very unpleasant zzzzzzzz in my AN. By now, my voice does it a lot, even just talking. Very depressing because singing is a big comfort to me. Sometimes it was almost painful.
And, it's worrysome because fullness is back and the zipping at night is back.
OK, so I'm thinking again about a procedure.
But ... I realized that if I hold my jaw and sing, no zzzzzzz. And then I realized that if I touch the two top back teeth when I sing, no zzzzzz. And, I could feel electricity coming into my finger from those two teeth.
Finally I got my dentist to pull the wisdom tooth which had a big gold crown and would really vibrate when I sing. The noise of the zzzzz immediately dimished by 85%. It happens just as often, but less loud and at least I can hear my own singing now. But 15% left is still awful for singing.
The next tooth, which also vibrates like heck, and seemed to be just as problematic looks to be porcelin. So I was discouraged because porcelin ought not have electromagnetic properties. Well, I asked my dentist and NO, it is just a porcelin shell baked on a gold crown! More gold, more heavy electromagnetic material vibrating.
Hopefully replacing that crown with non-metal will help a lot.
My final degree is in theoretical radio astronomy so I have (or I used to have) a good understanding of electromagnetism. It seems and feels to me as if my rattling electromagnetic teeth are charging up my nerves on that side and excess charge is collecting in the AN, which is acting like a capacitor, holding the charge. When I'm falling asleep, it discharges into my brain -- real creepy.
And, five years ago, when the dentist put in the gold crown on the wisdom tooth, I started experiencing terrible eczema in that right ear only (the AN ear). At the time, I asked the dentist if it could be related to all the metals in my teeth. He didn't think so. He sent me to a specialist who didn't know, and had never seen anything like it before, like the terrible eczema in and on one ear.
At the time, I thought there would be hell to pay for all this, but I was powerless to do anything about it.
So, my dear new friends and fellow AN sufferers, please check your teeth on your AN side. Do you have lots of metal back there? Is this possibly a contributing cause?
What do you think?
Marilyn Davis
Mountain View, CA USA
