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My employers Dave and his partner Ray concurred, that I should take Actifed or Sudafed depending on whether I wanted to be awake or sleep, the theory being that to clear my sinuses, would lessen the ringing. I promptly went out and got some. Never have taken any kind of medication in general, and did not like the way this stuff made me feel. It did not help in any case.
I spent a few days in hard concentration on something or other, in an attempt to distract myself from the ear-splitting ringing. This kind of racket meant suicide. After a week it started getting better. Then it occurred to me, the cause was the headphones. So the idea now was to protect my ears from noise, as it was
apparent that noise made the ringing louder. I went down to a gun-shop on Mission Street near the junction of Valencia. There were about six guys in there. I was looking at ear protection and feeling really sorry for myself. I told the clerk why I wanted ear muffs for ringing ears. A guy standing next to me said, "Everybody in here has ringing ears". He said he had them. Said he was a motorcycle cop. Said he was on Broadway in North Beach when he got a call to go to the Fillmore area for a shooting connected to the Zebra murders. Said he raced through the Broadway Tunnel with his siren blaring and his radio blasting, and when he came out the other end, his ears were ringing and have been so ever since.
It was about this time that I moved out of the apartment. I had been sharing a room with my Phy, which was OK when he was young.
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