The Diary That Stopped

This is not an article. It is a real diary — the raw notes the maker of this app kept, on and off, during the first months after his tinnitus began in the fall of 2020. Apart from removing names and fixing typos, it is unedited.

First, what it is not: it is not a list of suggestions. Quite the opposite — most of the things recorded here turned out, in hindsight, to have no verifiable effect. Its value is not in any single entry. It is in how it ends.

The diary

Mid-to-late September (the days before it started): drank alcohol, had a toothache, a throat infection.

Around September 25: started hearing a sound. At first, only at night.

September 27: turning my head quickly brings on about a second of dizziness.

The days after: gradually worse. From ringing only at night to hearing it in the daytime too.

October 3: hearing test at the hospital — a dip at 4000 Hz. Prescribed ginkgo extract, mecobalamin, and an herbal sedative.

October 7: went to another major hospital; couldn't get an appointment for the scan.

October 10: met a fellow tinnitus patient. We talked for a long time.

October 14: one of the big military hospitals. Several visits back and forth.

October 17: downloaded a dozen journal papers about tinnitus at school. Ran a few laps around the track in the evening.

October 18: bought medication for my blood lipids. Noticed that when I clench my teeth, the ringing changes; lying in bed before sleep, my pulse seems to affect it too.

October 19: it seems a little lighter. The sound isn't loud, though it swells now and then — or maybe it's just becoming background noise. Hoping it gets better. I'm soaking my feet at night, drinking corn-silk tea, and exercising to "drive the dampness out," as traditional medicine puts it.

November 2: third IV infusion. The right ear is clearly better, which makes the left side seem worse — indirect proof the right side recovered a bit, I suppose.

November 8: at school for classes; read more papers in between. This hospital's formula doesn't include gastrodin or lidocaine, and it doesn't seem to be doing much. Looked it up — gastrodin is for "nervous weakness." Maybe that's what I have, or maybe it's my jaw joint. Tonight: a hot towel on my face, then pressure-point massage.

January 17, 2021: annual checkup. Blood lipids high, mild fatty liver, thyroid normal. I'm losing weight and exercising moderately, hoping it helps the tinnitus. Tonight feels okay — at least it's no worse. Tooth extraction tomorrow. My right eyelid keeps twitching these days; probably the bad tooth on that side.

The diary stops here.

Written six years later

There was no next entry — not because the tinnitus went away (it is still here today), but because it stopped being worth recording. The best possible ending for a tinnitus diary is that it goes quiet.

Reading these months back now, I can see the two things that were really happening.

The first: fear was looking for an outlet. What I feared most then was that it would keep getting louder until it swallowed my hearing entirely; later, that something was growing in my brain. What finally settled me was not any medicine — it was finishing the checks that needed to be done. The audiogram, the MRI. The worst possibilities were ruled out. A normal result didn't make the sound any quieter, but it cut the fear in half — and back then, the fear was tormenting me far more than the sound was.

The second: I was checking on the sound constantly, disguised as staying busy. Logging the volume every day, comparing left ear to right, trying something new and immediately grading the result. It looked like actively helping myself. What it actually did was confirm to my brain, dozens of times a day: this sound is important — keep watching it. The one real turning point in the whole diary is that half-sentence from October 19: "or maybe it's just becoming background noise." And it had nothing to do with that day's corn-silk tea.

What it is to me now

These days I don't notice it at all in ordinary life. Only in a quiet place, when I deliberately go looking for it, is it there. And over the years, an unexpected relationship has formed: it has become my body's barometer. Too little sleep, alcohol, a cold coming on — it gets louder. When I'm well rested and doing fine, it is so faint it might as well not be there. I no longer treat it as an enemy. It is an indicator light on the dashboard — when it comes on, I go to bed earlier.

The clue was in the diary all along: clenching my teeth changed the sound; the onset came after drinking; fatigue made it louder. This kind of body-state modulation of tinnitus is very common, and it does not mean things are getting worse. Read the other way, it means the sound is wired to your overall state — and when the state improves, the sound steps back with it.

If you are writing your own first page

• Get the medical checks done, early. Ruling out the bad possibilities is itself one of the most effective forms of relief.
• Most of what I tried back then — infusions, supplements, foot soaks, folk remedies — had no verifiable effect. What worked was time, and no longer grading every day.
• If you keep a diary too: that's fine. Just don't let it become a daily score for your tinnitus. The sign that you are getting better is that you forget to write.

This is one person's real experience, not medical advice. For your own situation, let your doctor's judgment lead.