Hi
Been reading up on here as loads I need to learn, was diagnosed 3 weeks ago, had a lumber puncture 3 days ago and since then I’ve had a feeling of pressure in my ears and muffled hearing , it’s really starting to annoy me, I’ve had tinnitus for over 20 years but this is different, left ear is worse and also sounds like a humming noise , with ms nurse tomorrow so will bring it up with her just wondering if anyone else has had this ? It went away for few hours only to return, first of many questions to come ,
Hope everyone is doing ok
Thanks for any helpful responses
This is personal experience only: I have no expertise. Many years ago my MS was going off like a firework display and I lost more or less the hearing in one ear. I was told that hearing loss in MS was exceedingly rare but I was getting an MRI anyway because of all the other stuff going on so they said they would take a look. Sure enough, there was an MS lesion that was causing it. Steroids fixed the hearing loss like magic - I wish it had worked as well for everything else. So my experience is that it’s rare but it happens.
What I would say is that common things are commoner than rare things. So obviously all the common causes of hearing loss would need to be excluded before you started thinking MS was the culprit . But you know all that.
Hi
Alison
Thanks for replying, I came home from hospital 3 weeks ago with 5 days of steroids they seemed to help with my symptoms but took a while, numbness /altered sensations from chest down, now just fingertips and some tingling to my side and small small amount in legs but 90% better than it was , I will ask nurse tomorrow if I can have another 5 days if she thinks it’s a new symptom, on googling lumber puncture and hearing problems it does seem to be a rare side effect so I’ll see what she says tomorrow as it’s my first meeting
Thanks again for taking the time to respond
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Definitely a good idea to ask for advice from the MS nurse. I doubt whether they’ll be keen to give you more steroids yet - the ones the gave you before might still be at work, and they don’t like to overdo them. Also, I suspect they would want to be sure that your hearing troubles were MS-related before treating them as if they were.
The drugs that I hope you will be talking to the MS nurse about are the disease modifying drugs that aim to minimise the frequency and severity of future relapses rather than (like steroids) just trying to mop up the mess after the relapse has already hit the fan, so to speak. The easiest sort of relapse to fix is the one you didn’t have in the first place!
Hi
You were right , reluctant to give more steroids and we did talk about dmd’s she doesn’t think it’s a relapse she believes it’s from the lunar puncture as she said it can happen before , they want to wait to see if it goes away on its own I’m praying it does because it’s extremely intrusive like I’m in a room with a tumble dryer in the background and pressure in ear ,I’ve seen online a patient suffered tinnitus and hearing loss after lumber puncture and a blood patch cured it , I mentioned this but didn’t seem like an option? If still present I will be chasing up the blood patch again
Thanks again for your help 
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