15 Months In, a Concert, and New Tools in the Toolkit

My noise-induced T has been with me for about 15 months now. I had worked hard on it, so it was quiet almost all the time thanks to the following combination of activities weekly:

• Swimming 20-30 minutes at a pace that makes me breathe pretty hard (don't know the heart rate, but let's just say "aerobic" level) 1-2 times per week.
• Zumba for 55 minutes 1-2 times weekly. DEFINITELY at an aerobic level
• Jogging/walking as needed for 20-30 minutes if I'm not doing one of the other things above. Generally get a minimum of 30 minutes, 6 out of 7 days per week.
• Wearing noise-canceling earbuds at night if my husband was snoring (many nights) because the volume is close to 70db. I use the Bose in-ear QC-20 with the smallest size tips. Since I sleep like a corpse, I don't have a problem with getting tangled up in corded headphones. If I wear them, I often use an AudioNotch playlist all night too, at a barely-audible level.

On most days, also, about an hour or more of AudioNotch listening at work using over-hear headphones.

This was doing a great job of suppressing my T so it was, truly, inaudible. Not gone, because some days I would wake up and realize the snoring must have been loud (after I went to bed without ear protection) - because it would be back.

THEN I went to a musical WITH ear protection. (See separate post about Hedwig and the Angry Inch.) I should have read into the description "rock musical" to understand that the effect would be like that of a concert in a smaller space - because the theater was certainly smaller than the usual venue for that much amplified music.

BANG - T was back, loud, and I wasn't happy. The usual effort was helping a little, but it was not truly suppressing it. I spent about a week and a half working hard again to find something that would work.

Yesterday (after a morning swim) I read about myNoise and Steve's Neural Symphony. I jumped in and got the iPhone app and "All You Can Hear" package, then spent time with Neural Symphony+Northern Lights together. By the end of the day - SILENCE. It is still quiet today.

My takeaway: sometimes I need to shake up the listening therapies. I was so happy to add myNoise to the toolkit and hope that continuing the aerobic work and listening to both AudioNotch and myNoise in some combination will help me keep the T quiet.

And in the future, I will contact the theater before buying tickets to a musical and ask for the decibel levels. Lesson learned, the hard way.

Hope that can help someone else. I'm a happy woman today, that's for sure.

 

Any chance of getting neural symphony for Android?

 

MyNoise Neural Symphony for 30 minutes tonight and my tinnitus got much quieter. It masks my tinnitus and actually makes it softer.