We haven't posted a Cured Whoosher story in a while.  Not to say that there has been a lull in these stories - we've actually seen a tremendous increase in stories of diagnosis and treatment! 

This story below is from Christine, who exhibited persistence and hope to find an explanation for her pulsatile tinnitus after familiar roadblocks.  Christine not only finally has found a proper diagnosis but also treatment and ... silence! Good for you, Christine, for being your best advocate and for sharing your story.  Enjoy the silence!

Hello, I found your website a few months ago and I wanted to share my experience in hopes that others can find a cure as well. After a long frustrating few months and seeing a PCP, Neurosurgeon, two Neuro-radiologists, and three ENT doctors, I finally am whoosh free!
 
About four months ago I went to my doctor for what I thought would be an ear infection. I was told that my ear looked fine. I explained that I was hearing a whooshing sound in my left ear. The sound would stop when I pressed on the left side of my neck and would come back as soon as I released pressure. The doctor ordered an MRI/MRA of my head and referred me to an ENT doctor.  Two days later I was told that I had a brain tumor and needed to see a neurosurgeon. At this point, the whooshing sound was the least of my problems but I did see go see the ENT doctor. The doctor told me that the sound was caused by the brain tumor. This made sense to me since the tumor was the same side I was hearing the sound.
 
A week later I had my appointment with the neurosurgeon. I was happy to find out that the tumor was most likely benign; however, I had to have it removed as was large and was invading my superior sagittal sinus. My doctor was insistent that the tumor was not causing me to hear the whooshing sound. He sent me for an ultrasound of my neck, and a CT scan and nothing related to the noise was found. A few weeks later I had most of tumor removed and unfortunately the sound did not go away. 
 
A few weeks after recovering, I made an appointment with the second ENT doctor. He had his radiologist review the images and he ordered an MRV of the head to look closer at all the vessels in my brain. This scan also came back normal. The doctor said that the noise is most likely caused by the small piece of tumor that was left. I brought this information back to my neurosurgeon and he completely disagreed. 
 
I went on to take it upon myself and schedule an appointment with a neuro-radiologist. This doctor thought I had a fistula and scheduled me for an angiogram. I had the angiogram and everything came back normal. I was told that I would just have to live with the noise. I saw another neuro-radiologist for a second opinion. He reviewed all my scans and came back with the same response that everything looked fine.  At this point, I felt hopeless and depressed. The thought having to live with this whooshing sound for the rest of my life was crazy to me.  
 
A few weeks later, I went in to see my neurosurgeon for a follow-up. Although he thought that there was nothing wrong he decided to refer me to a friend of his. An ENT doctor that specializes in Neurotology. I was hesitant at this point to see another doctor. I was so drained from all the appointments and testing. I decided I would go and meet with the doctor. I wasn’t expecting much but I’m so happy I went to this appointment. The doctor was looking at my previous CT scans (the same scan that all the other doctors saw) and saw something. He told me that it looks like I have a sigmoid sinus dehiscence. The bone over my sigmoid sinus was gone. However, he saw this on both sides of my head but I wasn’t hearing anything from the right side. He sent me for a high resolution CT of my temporal bone.  I got a call confirming that the new CT scan showed a sigmoid sinus dehiscence. He thought the reason I was hearing it on my left side was because my veins were more dominant on that side. The doctor was hesitant to say that this was definitely the cause of the whooshing sound but he said that it was the only thing that made sense.  I scheduled surgery for two weeks later to have the hole repaired.

It’s been a week since surgery and I am whoosh free! My ear is still swollen and not back to normal but I am hopeful that once everything is completely healed the noise will still be gone. 

For more info on Sigmoid Sinus Dehiscence see this link from Johns Hopkins.  Also see more personal stories of successful diagnosis and treatment on the Cured Whooshers page.