hi all, SO glad i found this site. I have been walking around in mystery and having nowhere to turn.

In November 2006 (Thanksgiving, I recall it well) i got tinnitus in my R ear out of the blue. At first i thought, virus ... allergy. I waited for it to go away.

I finally looked at my teeth and discovered a dead tooth, lower R side. 2nd or 3rd one from the middle. Went to my trusted (traditional) dentist. Details are fuzzy but i guess it was removed and crowned. And a root canal, can't remember, maybe, but the endo said i needed a root canal on the next tooth over further to the back. That was also crowned or already had a crown. Now we're up to June and Sep 2007.

I did not recover, pain-wise, from second tooth treatment well. I think i had more pain but mild, so the endo took another look and said she would redo it. (I guess she must have seen something in order to make that offer.) Root canal redone Nov. 2007.

After the redo my pain which was unbearable. First she gave me vicodin, then percocet, then oxycontin. Finally i stopped taking meds as i was spaced out too much. Thankfully this pain went away. Stopped pills mid-Dec 2007.

However, (in an unrelated action) I went in for an ear test for my tinnitus in mid-Jan 2008 and the test gave me R ear pain - the sound was too loud. 10 days later, someone laughed very close to my ear and gave me hyperacusis, and my hearing tolerance threshold plunged dramatically.

Since then I have had hyperacusis. I've recovered some, but still, many things sound too loud and if I overdo it I get ear pain too. Unexpected sounds like a leaf blower will also cause ear pain. I'm unable to attend most social events, go to restaurants, parties, etc. I've had to give up my career. My life has change dramatically and as you can imagine, not in a way I would've wished for.

I never understood what happened to me or why. A laugh in my ear?

Some years later, going through my pill chest, I saw the half empty unused pill bottles dated in December, 2007.

It's just such a strange coincidence that I had this horrible pain from a root canal redo and two months later, I have hyperacusis.

Since that time, I've had occasional fleeting pain in my lower R jaw. I asked my dentist about it once and he ground down my tooth a little bit. That seemed to help. However, it was his daughter who was the Endos so I don't feel he's the best person to dig deep about what happened.

I have this nagging feeling - for obvious reasons - that something went very wrong with my root canal. Either a toxic substance was placed in the root canal, or there is still bacteria in there, which is now pressing on a nerve. I am allergic to nickel and who knows what other metals and substances?

In any case, I have been afraid to pursue finding out because I am afraid that if it is atypical facial pain or trigeminal neuralgia, I am only going to make things worse by trying to fix or remove this.

If I thought I could get a diagnosis or a way to fix this without doing greater harm, I would certainly pursue that. But then again, I would have to know who what I see in the first place? An oral surgeon? Another dentist? a neurologist? etc? Or is it not even worth the risk, even though my life is pretty much over. I still don't want TN or more pain as an outcome.

Many thanks for listening. I am open to suggestions.