I'll try and keep it short, but to make some sense of it, it needs a bit of background.
My tinnitus was caused by a prescription drug allergy. Not ototoxicity in the true sense, but effectively, I had systemic allergic symptoms to Levothyroxine which included typical allergic symptoms such as itching, hives, watery eyes etc., but also mouth ulcers, dry mouth, muscle twitches, fluctuating blood pressure, migraines with loss of vision etc. and of course tinnitus (although this didn't start for quite some while after the other symptoms). The tinnitus was further exacerbated because all the inflammation resulted in ETD as well. I was in and out of hospital for months without a diagnosis other than some strange auto-immune disease as a probable cause, but equally told repeatedly that it could not be connected to the Levothyroxine I had started 6 weeks before all this first began. Eventually, after nearly 2 years, I made the call myself to stop taking it in place of a substitute that is not listed on the MIMS in the UK.
Following this, within 3-6 months of stopping it, almost all the other symptoms gradually disappeared. Sadly tinnitus was not amongst them and in fact became a hundred fold worse to start with. It sounded like I had a jet engine taking off inside my head.
Eventually, now 16 months since I stopped taking it, I still have tinnitus, but it is not so severe as it was and all the other symptoms have improved or gone completely (unrelated huh!). I have not had a single migraine and my allergies have settled a lot. I still have ETD as my right ear regularly clogs up throughout the day and especially at night - when lying down to sleep and I always wake in the morning to a lot of squelchy noises in that ear if I yawn or hiccup or similar.
The reactivity isn't totally gone, but being in an office is not enough to set it off. I'm still very cautious with my hearing and wear ear defenders when vacuuming or anything of a similar amplitude.
I still need a TV on in the background to fall asleep, but I think a lot of this is to do with my brain seeking out some sort of noise all the time and without some sort of background noise, it keeps amplifying the tinnitus I do have.
Equally however, I do have moments - quite regularly - when the tinnitus disappears - and I mean totally. These periods of silence have been getting longer and longer. Sometimes, lasting several hours at a time. However, I still have flare-ups for no apparent reason that can be very intrusive and distressing - in some ways, the huge amount of variance I have makes it worse for me to cope as I can be on a real high, tinnitus free, busy and engaged and suddenly, out of the blue, my hearing is at it again and it knocks me right back down.
I still remain optimistic that it will continue to improve. Whether or not it will go completely is another matter, but I have no reason to believe otherwise. If I think about things daily, then it never gets better, but if I work in 3 month blocks, then every block has yielded an improvement over the last.
It is now close to 2.5 years since the initial onset of tinnitus.
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