David Vance beat stage 3 cancer and survived grueling chemotherapy and radiation treatments. But a rare hearing disorder became too much for him and he attempted suicide in 2018.
The 40-year-old native of Ontario, Canada, now lives an isolated life with painful hyperacusis, a rare condition for which there is no cure or treatment.
It makes turning a page sound like a bomb going off in someone’s ears. Music sounds like an ice pick on the eardrum; a siren like a rocket launched from just a foot away.
You wear industrial-grade earmuffs when you leave the house, but even in the comfort and silence of your own home, you’re not immune to the pain. He said, “I have to go out into the world, I have to face the pain, face the noise and face the noise and I like to go to war.”
Meanwhile, Andrew Johnston, 25, from Texas, just underwent experimental brain surgery in an attempt to become deaf, something that may not be possible due to the risk of other nerves in the area.
Andrew Johnston, left, said his painful hyperacusis was caused by an extremely loud noise at a football match, and “mainly by bad luck.”
David Vance has painful hyperacusis. To deal with the pain, he wears earplugs under earmuffs when he leaves the house.
The noise of washing dishes and showering is painful. Even placing a cup on a table causes excruciating pain.
Hyperacusis is considered rareaffecting one in every 50,000 people.
There is no known cure or proven effective treatment for this condition.
Doctors may try benzodiazepines, which relieve anxiety, or sound exposure therapy, which focuses on changing the emotional response to noise by continually exposing the person to sounds.
Some people, including Johnston, try acupuncture, which involves inserting very fine needles through the skin at strategic points on the body. While there is some evidence that acupuncture can be used to treat pain in the sinus and ear canal area, Mr Johnston said it didn’t work for him in the slightest.
Increased sensitivity to sound is most commonly caused by an injury caused by exposure to extremely loud sound or a gradual degradation of the complex and delicate structure of the inner ear.
Vance was an MC at electronic dance music concerts for 20 years, warming up audiences and creating his own songs.
He said: “I was constantly around heavy bass and speakers for 20 years of my life and for 15 of those years, like three or four times a week.”
All those years of exposure to extreme noises took a toll on his hearing.
Johnston attributes his condition to a rowdy NFL game he attended two years ago. The pain from the damage to his inner ear became so intense that he had to drop out of college with only one semester left and move in with his supportive parents.
He said, “It’s not really something you can get over.” You just have to avoid all noise so that the pain is minimal.’
He described the pain as if hot lava had been poured into his ears. In exchanges with DailyMail.com, she said she had been considering surgically deafening herself “since the early days of this”.
Johnston underwent experimental surgery to become deaf. Doctors at a Texas hospital severed the intermediate nerve, which provides pain sensation to the inner ear.
“It just doesn’t make sense to live life with this condition.”
He made the radical decision to undergo a procedure to sever the cochlear nerve.
He added: “I tried to rest quietly for two years and see if I would recover, but in reality I only got worse.” That’s why I’ve decided to experiment with surgeries.’
The surgery is rare and experimental. Generally, surgeons perform procedures to improve a patient’s hearing loss, not complete it.
The cochlear nerve is the main nerve responsible for transmitting auditory information from the cochlea, the hearing organ in the inner ear, to the brain.
Doctors at a Texas hospital tried to cut it out, but couldn’t because of its proximity to the nerves responsible for balance and sense of taste.
Instead, they severed the intermediate nerve, which provides pain sensation to the inner ear.
“Purely experimental,” said Mr. Johnston.
“We’ll see if it works, if not, I’ll do another surgery later this year to remove the cochlear nerve,” which will leave him deaf.
Vance’s hearing problems accelerated shortly after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in his chest in 2017 and began chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
One day, after completing a three-month treatment regimen and returning to work as a waiter in the fine dining industry, the noise of the busy Toronto restaurant, the clatter of glasses and plates, became overwhelming. He decided to seek professional help.
Finally, a doctor identified the probable cause. Vance had to have teeth extracted before starting chemotherapy, a measure to mitigate the risk of infection if the teeth are unhealthy.
But that procedure altered the position of his temporomandibular joints (TMJ), altering the position of which could potentially affect surrounding structures and cause muscle strain in the jaw, which could potentially irritate nerves that are closely related to the auditory system, leading to increased muscle tension in the jaw. Sound sensitivity.
He said: “At first it was just an aching, burning pain and now what I feel has progressed over the years due to the medications I have taken to try to relieve it and more noise trauma.” So now I feel like I have lava acid burning in my ears.
‘One day it could burn, it could hurt. One day I might feel like I’m being stabbed and my whole face and head go up in pain too, down my neck to my shoulders and everything burns and hurts.
And he added: ‘Any sound turns him on. It could even be my coffee cup hitting the wooden table. It will just be a stabbing pain like in those areas.
There is no cure and there are not many treatments to choose from.
Dr. Kimanh Nguyen, an otolaryngologist based in Los Angeles, told DailyMail.com: In terms of treatment, it is difficult. If hyperacusis becomes very bothersome, there are (cognitive behavioral therapy) or tinnitus retraining therapies, which is a treatment process that trains the brain to become more accustomed to ringing, roaring, or ringing in the ears.
David Vance lives a largely isolated life. When she needs to leave the house, she wears earplugs under thick earmuffs.
Meanwhile, Johnston insists that deafness would be preferable to the daily excruciating pain of his condition, which he also compared to lava entering his ears.
He said: “I really don’t think living with this condition is an option.” That’s why I try to experiment with different things. Hopefully, if I can’t find a breakthrough, someone will be able to take advantage of my data in the future and save themselves.”
One type of age-related damage is called superior canal dehiscence, which occurs when the bone above the superior semicircular canal, one of three fluid-filled canals in the inner ear that are important for balance and orientation space, it wears out. decreases with age.
Hyperacusis could also be caused by damage to the auditory nerve, which runs between the ear and the brain.