Fire Alarm Caused a Spike in Tinnitus!

Hey everyone. I hope you're all having a better day then I am.

Yesterday I was exposed to a fire alarm twice, each time for only one second. But the alarm was only about six feet away, and it was in the break room, which I suppose could described as medium sized.

Usually I wear earplugs while work in the case of carts being slammed, stuff being dropped, and, of course, fire alarms. I wasn't wearing plugs this time because I was eating lunch. There's an outside break area as well, but it was raining that day.

Needless to say, I'm very frustrated that the ONE TIME I'm not protected they decide to test the fire alarm.

Despite it being only one second, I'm very worried about a possible setback.

At the time of this writing, I have no tinnitus spike (so far) but I have intermittent pain in my left ear not triggered by sound. I took Magnesium immediately when I got home, and thankfully took NAC that morning.

What are the odds of a possible set back from this? Anything else I can do to help me out?

 

Hey! The only fire alarm I’ve experienced that has given me any issue is with my initial trauma in which I was exposed for 2-4 minutes. Since then I’ve experienced probably 10 fire alarms, all for durations of 2-30 seconds approximately and none has done anything except make my ears feel a bit full for awhile. Try not to let anxiety overwhelm you it’ll almost certainly be ok ❤️

 

Thanks. It was just so loud and so unexpected, it scared the hell out of me.

I think I'm ok. If anything bad was going to happen, it probably would've happened by now.

I hope you are well.

 

I had a smoke alarm go off from about 3 feet away a week ago. A letting agent I was showing around a house I bought decided to press it to see if it worked without any warning! It was only on for two wails/beeps which was probably less than 2 seconds, but the alarm was very loud and high pitched. Sure enough I woke the next day with my tinnitus much, much worse.

My tinnitus is much louder, higher pitched and the tone is very uneven and sort of wavy.

There are lots of threads with people recovering from a spike in volume due to a fire alarm.

Has anyone had a noise-induced spike, which has also changed the pitch and tone, return to baseline?

Thanks for reading.

 

Yep, yesterday @ work, an old building, that we were looking after, had some kind of really loud & high-pitched squeal with a flashing strobe type light on top of the constant ringing bell.

Today is hell!

 

A week and a half later, no improvement.

 

My baseline has returned. However, I still get fluctuating days from insane to tolerable...

 

I was exposed to a smoke detector that went off. Long story about the how and why. In any case, I ended up spending about 5 minutes unprotected (really foolish but it was late and I had taken my meds and didn't think to grab headphones). I took out the batteries and eventually disconnected both detectors from the wiring.

It has taken more than a year for the spike to diminish. Things are still worse than they were and I have a change of pitch in my left ear which was perhaps a foot away from the alarm as I unscrewed it.

My right ear was originally far worse than the left. Now, I hear the left more prominently on moderate days. There is a tendency for the tinnitus to grow worse during the day until the right ear is way louder than the left. Before, the tinnitus was pretty constant from day to day. What I woke up with had been the level for the entire day.

Things are finally resetting after more than a year. The left ear still has the new tone but the decibel level has decreased somewhat. I have fewer days where the right ear amplifies up and up and up.

Ah yes, I post-alarm had sound distortions start in the left ear. That is almost entirely gone.

I would say spikes can take days, weeks, or in my case more than a year to diminish.

 

Hopefully what I am going through is a spike and not a permanent worsening. It's not the volume that's the issue, it's the fact that it's now so high pitched.

 

Yeah, I also find the high pitch to be an issue. I was exposed to a power tool several years back. That caused distortion and increased tinnitus for a few months, but it settled back to baseline. Hopefully, either the pitch changes for you or the volume reduces to the point where it is less bothersome.

Are you using sound enrichment? I pretty much rely on pink noise generators (also called maskers) when the tinnitus is severe. And I have hearing aids (not really necessary for hearing) but with a choice of pink noise or built-in Bluetooth that enables me to play soothing ocean waves. It makes it easier to get through the day.

 

When it gets really, bad I listen to a neuromodulation therapy video on YouTube. I was always really sceptical of these videos, but this one does actually reduce the volume and makes the pitch a bit softer for 30 minutes or so if I listen to it for 7-8 minutes.

 

I have played a bit with neuromodulation using the TinnitusPlay app on my iPhone.

Maybe I'll give it another try. I mostly use the notched audio to play water flowing type sounds.

I find that sleep is like a switch. Sometimes after a good night's sleep, the tinnitus is more muted, with two different tones (one in the left ear and one in the right) that are much more moderate than if I stay up late or watch lots of videos.

Of course, it's unpredictable, a good night's sleep is no guarantee of a more moderate day.

How is the spike doing?

 

The volume has gone down, but is still very high pitched.

Sleep is definitely a switch - most of the time it turns my volume down, but on the odd occasion it will turn it up. Most of the time sleep doesn’t change my tone, but sometimes I will wake with an electrical fizzing noise which is horrendous.

 

The volume going down seems like a good sign. Any symptoms reducing, whether sound distortion, volume, or fewer tones (I had three at the beginning), seems like a step towards improvement.

I also have that high pitch electrical fizz sound which is a bummer. On the couple of days a week the volume decreases, it's doable. Some weeks are better than others.

Sleep is also a switch for me. Usually the volume will go down after a good night's sleep. However, since exposure to the alarm, the volume often increases slowly over the day -- even switching from my left ear to the right ear. Getting to bed early and reducing my computer use seems to help over the longer term.

For a while, I tried playing really mellow folk music through my Bluetooth hearing aids (not really necessary for hearing but I decided to get them as a small percentage of people are helped out by using hearing aids). If I fell back asleep in the morning even for a half hour, somehow the combined sleep in music reduced the volume. I may go back to trying that approach again.