Mother, 49, can hear her own heartbeat and her eyeballs moving because of rare brain condition
A mother-of-two has been left tortured by a rare brain condition that means she can hear her own heartbeat and the sound of her eyeballs moving.
Pam Roberts, 49, from Maidstone, Kent, suffers from Superior Semicircular Canal Dehiscence (SSCD), which has made her hearing hyper sensitive.
The mother-of-two can hear own voice in her head and her body digesting food.
The rare condition has caused a hole between her brain and her inner ear which means she is forced to listen to the sounds of her body 24 hours per day.
“The most difficult thing for me is having my voice all the time like a broken kazoo – I can’t ever escape it,” she said.
“There are really bad days where I don’t answer the phone because I cannot bear to talk and have to listen to it.
“I have to have background noise on all the time to distract me from the sounds.
“It affects you mentally and makes you so depressed – I am a shell of my former self.”
Canal dehiscence refers to an opening in the bone that covers part of the inner ear and can affect a person’s hearing and balance.
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Although the true cause is unknown, it is thought the condition can be present from birth and the average age for diagnosis is 45.
Only one per cent of the population suffer from SSCD and Mrs Roberts has spoken with just ten other Britons who have the syndrome, via online forums.
She was diagnosed in 2015 and her partner Martyn Smith said the family have since been “torn apart by her condition”.
The 41-year-old X-ray engineer said: “Pam hides herself away and has become a recluse seeking refuge in the house – she has become a very different person to the old Pam.
“Having a social life is now too distressing for her as she cannot stand to even talk.
“Every day and all day, she hears the insides of her body – her eye balls moving, her footsteps, her own voice too loud inside her head and her breathing.
“She also feels out of balance and dizzy like the world is spinning.”
The couple have two children – Bethany, six and Bobbie, two – and Mrs Roberts had to cope with her condition during her second pregnancy.
She said: “The children just want to play and they scream when they are naturally excited – as children do – but it’s so painful for me.”
Mrs Roberts had surgery in the UK last year but says it has made her symptoms worse.
The couple are trying to raise £5,500 to fly to the US for further tests and surgery.
Mr Roberts said: “There is no real knowledge of this condition in the UK – few procedures have been performed by a couple of surgeons who are restricted to a single procedure due to the cost to the NHS.
“So Pam’s only option to get her life back is brain surgery – craniotomy – with an SSCD expert in the USA.”
