HealthWatch: Help for those experiencing hearing hell
By: Erin Davisson
Updated: January 1, 2013
(WFRV))--Trees blowing, birds singing, children laughing; they're all things many people enjoy hearing, but for one woman just about every sound was excruciating.
Imagine hearing your own heartbeat pounding inside your head and your voice echoing. Every sound you make, every sound you hear is
amplified.
That was the reality for Kerrie Aitken. Says Aitken, "My whole world just changed. I had no control over myself anymore."
For nine months Aitken suffered from dizziness, nausea, and depression. Doctors did not know why. She was told to see a psychiatrist.
UCLA Medical Center head and neck surgeon Dr. Quinton Gopen said by the time he saw Aitken, "she was pretty beaten down. She had lost a lot of weight."
Dr. Gopen pinpointed the problem inside Aitken's ear. It was smaller than a pinhead.
Dr. Gopen opened Aitken's skull, moved the brain to get to her ear, and filled a two millimeter hole with a bone wax. He then lined the area with muscle, and covered it with a tiny piece of bone from her skull.
"People wake up in tears, not from pain, but from joy because the noise is gone immediately after surgery, ": said Dr. Gopen.
Kerrie Aitken, "The first thing I did not hear was that wonderful heart beating. I was so happy."
The problem is called Superior Canal Dehiscence. The condition was not discovered until 1998 and it is just beginning to be taught to students in medical schools.
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