Can Drilling Noise Coming from Outside Make Tinnitus Worse?

This Wednesday my neighbour did a lot of hammering and drilling. On and off for 7-8 hours. With a few breaks.

I was wearing ear muffs inside my house. I noticed the drilling had stopped for a while and decided to go through the hallway to get something from another room. At this point only my right ear was covered by my ear muffs, my left one was partly covered which is probably useless.

I was almost back to my room when they started drilling again! So my left ear has been exposed for 4-5 seconds of drilling. The notable obstacles in the way were obviously the walls of the house and the entrance door, closed.

Can this cause a permanent worsening? I take NAC daily 600 mg or 1200 mg depending on how I feel and magnesium 400 mg. So that should account for something, I hope. I take other supplements, but less regularly.

My right ear feels like usual, while my left ear feels more sensitive to sound and is ringing louder than previously. Now I get mild pain in my left ear from some sounds like TV if it's louder than usual and from chewing. It feels like my ears are ruined and I'm walking on thin ice. Could this be just a spike or did I mess up?

 

Did the spike recede?

 

Oh damn. I wanted to write an update on this but forgot.

After about 1 week, I would say I got 90% back to the previous baseline. Maybe all the way. My tinnitus sounds like such a mess that's it's hard to tell sometimes. I was anxious at the time of the original post.