Help Me Please

I have had tinnitus quite bad for years, from chronic sound, now i normally wear bose headset everywhere. the place i work has a very loud fire alarm. as soon as it started i immediately put my fingers in my ears, to make it quieter. it must have gone on for 5 minutes. afterward, the tinnitus was slightly worse, but now is 7 hours later, and the tinnitus is real loud. i have tried taking sleeping pill, but it only put me out for 4 hours. now i have taken more pill, but nothing happens and it is real loud. help me please.

 

@object16 i too had tinnitus from 2003 but oct 2015 suddenly got worse and much louder. I know it takes some time to habitate to sound and now there is a new sound. My advice is try not to panic the more stress the louder the tinnitus becomes. Get some rest if possible and let's hope that tomorrow it's better. ️Hugs

 

Do not panic. Putting your fingers in your ears as soon as the alarm went off protected you from further hearing loss and therefore more T due to extra hearing loss.
Your T went up because it was reactive to the sound and, and a bigger reason was the stress, the fear caused by the alarm event.
It is just a spike, not your new T level.
A spike can take a long time, many days even, but it's not your new T level.
Try to relief the stress, to cross this difficult period of time taking some meds of the kind that helped you in the past, and engaging in activities that could absorb you and forget about T.
My T wasn't reactive for many years after onset. Only last year, in my 7th year, it got reactive to sound, meaning that I get a spike with every loud sound I hear. It's possible that your T became reactive. And the fear, the stress alone , can be a trigger for a spike.
IMO sleep as much as you can, take natural sedatives, do anything that you think that would make you pleasure, if you don't succeed, vent here. The spike will pass.

 

Sorry about your T suffering. You are going through a setback, a spike which normally will settle back to baseline. Exposure to it with the finger protecting for 5 minutes shouldn't damage your ears. So don't panic and stress too much. Anxiety and stress are bad for T. Try masking if you haven't yet. Here are some suggestions:

TT’s own excellent masking sounds:
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/audioplayer/

If you need more masking sounds, here is free ‘aire freshener’:
http://www.peterhirschberg.com/mysoftware.html

You can mix your own rain sounds with this rain generator:
http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/rainNoiseGenerator.php

Search youtube with ‘masking sounds’ and you will also get lots of different nature sounds, such as rain, waves, waterfalls, running brooks, insect sounds, even shower & faucet etc.

Also if you have trouble sleeping, mask it at bed time with a sound machine or a sound pillow. Also use an ipad or smart phone for masking on the go. Masking can help reduce your anxiety level which will help calm the T.

 

thanks all for your kind words, and your suggestion that my fingers in ears probably prevented any hearing damage. It was screaming in the middle of the night, i took sedatives that i keep in reserve in case of emergency, i did sleep quite long, after they kicked in, and the tinnitus has improved significantly this morning. I imagine, like you say, it may take several days or weeks to settle down to baseline, and it is an exaggerated recruitment that is going on. so i am improved this morning, which makes me optimistic that this will gradually settle down to baseline.