Hyperacute hearing—good and bad

• There is no escaping the fact that there is a good side and a bad side to hyperacusis.  

• Good- I can hear my family’s cars when they are a block away, even when the windows and doors are closed.

• Bad – I can and did hear everything that doctors said about me even when I was supposedly not listening. One doc at Johns Hopkins at least had the decency to step out into the corridor with my parents, while a resident stayed with me.

• Good – I can hear all my brother’s conversations with girls, even when he’s in the bathroom and running the shower so we can’t hear.

• Sean Sokler, George Mason University, Class of 2005