BANBURY, England – Doctors were baffled when a British man told them, "I can hear my eyeballs moving." But they finally diagnosed that Stephen Mabbutt had a rare ear condition in which sounds inside the body are heard very loudly, The Sun reported Monday. Mabbutt, 57, could also hear his heart beating -- and when he chewed food, the noise was deafening to him. The dad of two was experiencing autophony, one of the symptoms of superior canal dehiscence syndrome, an illness that was unknown until 10 years ago. At first, he noticed that the internal sound of his own voice was beginning to drown out everything else around him. Over six years, the condition worsened as other bodily noises joined in. "I was sitting quietly alone in the house one evening, and I suddenly heard this quite loud scratchy noise, like sandpaper being rubbed on wood," Mabbutt said. "I was quite alarmed and looked around, wondering what it was. Then I noticed the noise came every time I moved my eyes. I started to think I was going mad." He added, "The first symptoms appeared around 2005. I found if I raised my voice, I'd get a vibration in my head. If I was eating a bag of crisps, the crunching noise drowned out people speaking. Then I found I would be hearing my heartbeat." But this year, a CT scan showed a tiny hole in the temporal bone in Mabbutt's skull, which meant that fluid from the semicircular canals of the inner ear was leaking into his brain and conducting internal sounds. Mabbutt, a company training coordinator from Banbury in Oxfordshire, southern England, underwent an operation that cured the problem. Richard Irving, the consultant physician who treated Mabbutt, said, "It is a very unusual condition and difficult to spot."
I can say with 100% certainty that if I'm this guy, I'm not here blogging today...I would have lasted about 3 weeks before looking up assisted suicide options. No joke.
This would drive me fucken nuts. Like when you get irritated at a co-worker tapping their pen, or a leaky faucet, only x30 worse because the sound is coming from your own frigen eye balls. How the hell did this bro deal with this for 6 years! Like what the hell do you resort to when trying to tune out the sound of your eye balls just doing their job.
This would drive me fucken nuts. Like when you get irritated at a co-worker tapping their pen, or a leaky faucet, only x30 worse because the sound is coming from your own frigen eye balls. How the hell did this bro deal with this for 6 years! Like what the hell do you resort to when trying to tune out the sound of your eye balls just doing their job.
The worst part about this is it sounds like it didn't extend to super human hearing for everything else, just annoying as fuck internal bodily functions. It'd be one thing putting up with this if you all of a sudden had better hearing than your pet dog, hearing the neighbors getting their freak on next door, overhearing peoples drama when you're out at the mall...running the bar pick-up circuit, just eavesdropping on groups of chicks conversations and then making your move based on your inquired intel (pretty sure this could be the basis for a Ryan Reynolds movie). But it's another thing entirely when it just applies to eye balls moving, ear hair growth, and booger production. That's the worst special talent I've ever heard of.
