8 Weeks of Tinnitus: My Day to Day Symptom Journal — Will My Tinnitus Continue to Reduce?

Hi there,

As promised, I'm going to keep describing my experiences with tinnitus, partially for me, and partially for those who come after me.

Two weeks ago I indicated that I was 'coping well'. I'd say that still largely holds true. Sure, some nights are more annoying than others. But over all I'm getting back to 'life', and actually think things are improving slightly. Certainly my ability to cope with it is improving a lot.

But I have more than just my subjective experience to go by. I've been keeping a very careful journal of my symptoms, which include daily entries of the pitch and volume of my tinnitus, separated by left ear, right ear and head (sadly I experience all three). And those ratings provide more empirical evidence to suggest that my tinnitus really is dissipating somewhat. Slowly, to be sure; but surely, as well.

Attached to this post are my daily volume entries for the last 8 weeks for each of the left ear, right ear and head (each had been rated out of ten). As you can see, all three are showing slow, nonlinear, but still fairly steady declines in volume. Indeed, on a week view (not shown), my average volume rating has dropped from about a 4/10 to about a 2/10. In addition, when I get spikes, they aren't quite as bad as they were before. And they may last quite as long either.

Will it continue to drop? Who knows. But at least new people to the board can know approximately what to expect from their symptoms: they ARE still likely to be there in two months, but they AREN'T likely to be as bad, or as troublesome.

I'm going to keep scoring my symptoms, and will keep posting them periodically for the community. Perhaps it'll help give people a valid indication of the timeframe people should expect to see changes in.

Cheers,
Matt