Hyperacute hearing—good and bad

• “During my entire school life (and home life) I have been able to hear conversations fluently even when the speakers are far from me. There is no escaping the fact that there is a good side and a bad side to hyperacusis.  

• 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