Day 68 Update
Hello again, things are much the same since my last post. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for more improvement or more rapid improvement. I had two really good days around July 7th, one where I even noted "wow I feel 96% normal this is like my baseline again!" Gave me so much hope but then 2-3 bad days came again.
Not sure what to do anymore... Maybe this isn't a spike and it's my permanent new normal. People have told me I'm doing much better now than a month ago, so perhaps the change is so gradual I don't notice it within myself. I'm a little worried as I went through my old tinnitus journals and this spike/issue is way different. I would say how loud it is now, a 2.5 to 4, is as high as it ever got with my previous bouts that nearly drove me mad. But this is my "reduced" sound from the 7/8 at start.
Plus, after my last noise exposure bout I had normal days within 1 month, still had a few issues 3 months out, but by 6 I was largely normal again and it was always coverable with white noise. My onset from medicine took 6-7 months to get okay-ish and another year to get very low. But both of those were lower to start with, unless my mind and memory are playing tricks.
I guess I'm just getting a little scared again because I thought that surely by month 2 I'd have more improvement. And I've heard the first 3 months are the most critical. I don't want to be stuck like this but I have to remain positive. Just having 1-2 days of normalcy is a good sign that I can have more. Things are certainly not getting worse. I just have to power through it.
Sorry if this is rant-y but I hope documenting my experiences is helpful to some people.
In my first few months I was trying to find all spike factors from own experience and from what I read on this forum. So I avoided alcohol, coffee, salt, loud environments, you name it. But there was a turning point where I decided that I would not let tinnitus be the leader of the rest of my life. It can ride along, but I am not allowing it to steer. So I stopped the avoiding and was willing to accept the spikes and deal with them. I think this new mindset took away my fear of tinnitus and with that, the spikes did no longer cause anxiety. In my case the mindset of not trying to avoid spikes helped me a lot with getting used to tinnitus to a point that it no longer has an impact on my life. I am writing this because if it worked for me, there is a chance that it might work for you or any reader of this forum.
I hope you will keep improving. Thank you very much for sharing all your updates. I see that your posts are providing hope for many readers.
Thank you for your kind words. I cut out alcohol and coffee when I had my noise induced spike 2.5 years ago. I was going to try adding them back into my diet this year until this new madness struck me. I'm glad you are able to accept your spikes and still enjoy the things you love. I dearly miss coffee and I hope someday soon I will get to taste it again.
Part of my fear is that I don't know what caused this in the first place. I was reasonably sure what happened the first time with medicine, the second time was noise, this time I am clueless and I don't want to do anything to make it worse because 2 months in it still isn't better.
Something must have triggered it ... I can't just believe it was totally out of my control and just randomly started when it was so good for years and years.
