Until I reached a point where I just couldn't handle the noise anymore. And then all sudden, the symptoms would come back but they're now worse. She worried no one would believe her symptoms.Īnn Miller: You don't want to go to the doctor and say, 'I'm hearing noises,' you know, because you know that what's going to happen is the little man with a little white jacket is going to turn and go, 'Come this way, we've got a nice room for you.' So I just sort of thought well, maybe it would go away, because what would happen is it would get bad and then all of a sudden the symptoms would die down a bit. Sana Qadar: Still, Ann didn't go to the doctor for a number of years. I was getting irritable, my partner actually thought I was suffering from dementia because I could forget things because there was just so much going on and you couldn't concentrate. But everybody else, my friends and family and my partner, they just thought that I was going crazy. Sana Qadar: As things got worse for you, how did that affect your mental health? I mean, obviously, your daily ability to function was affected.Īnn Miller: Yes, because I'm on this side. The vision would change.Īnn Miller: With every heartbeat, so it was like, oh, wow… But then my eyes couldn't adjust because every time my heart beat, my eyes would flick. Soft food, you know, mashed potatoes, that was great. Sana Qadar: On top of that, noises from inside and outside her body were growing louder.Īnn Miller: Forget about going to dinner, in a loud restaurant in particular, that was just hell for me. It was like I was walking on a boat, you, the floor seemed to be moving. Sana Qadar: As the dizziness got worse, Ann's vision started to blur.Īnn Miller: In order to walk down the corridor, and it's a long corridor as well, I had to put one hand over my one eye, because my eyes couldn't focus.
![skull and bones drawing skull and bones drawing](http://www.clipartbest.com/cliparts/4Tb/pMx/4TbpMxqac.jpg)
My head was throbbing and I was feeling dizzy and disorientated and so on. So when I went home, the first thing I could do was I would lay down on the couch and virtually put a pillow over my head because I just needed to be quiet.
![skull and bones drawing skull and bones drawing](http://www.clipartbest.com/cliparts/ecM/yBG/ecMyBGqei.jpg)
Sana Qadar: About six years ago, Ann started to experience the very first signs that something wasn't quite right.Īnn Miller: I was feeling the vertigo and the dizziness, and then you just sort of ignore it, and then what would happen is…being a teacher, you would go to school and there was so much noise going on and it was reverberating in my head. I suffered from a condition called superior canal dehiscence which literally means that I had a hole in my head between my brain and my inner ear. In this episode we'll go into an operating room and catch a glimpse of the brain, all in a bid to learn about this little-known condition called superior canal dehiscence syndrome.Īnn Miller: My name is Ann Miller, I'm a teacher in Bankstown. Sana Qadar: Hi, I'm Sana Qadar, and you're listening to All in the Mind. And so people start believing that they are actually crazy. Tom Kertesz: Some people can take two to four years to get diagnosed, because if you go to a doctor and say, 'I can feel my eyeballs moving,' most people think you're crazy. But it can have a profound impact on a person's life and mental health. It so bizarre and rare, that most doctors haven't even heard of it. Sana Qadar: Superior canal dehiscence syndrome, that's to blame for this cacophony of sound. And some days your knees and your feet when you walk, you just don't want to walk because of the noise that comes back through your head, it's just unbelievableĪnn Miller: And forget about stomach noises, that's just unbelievably yucky. Your voice echoes back through your head all the time. Sana Qadar: There's a condition you've likely never heard of, where the symptoms include hearing sounds like these, all from within your own body.īruce Williams: When you move your eyes, it's a popping at the ears, that's what it sounds like. And you can hear your blood moving as well. But then underneath that you can hear your heart beating. And then you can hear your ribs creaking, you know, and then the rush of air out.
![skull and bones drawing skull and bones drawing](http://getdrawings.com/image/skull-and-bones-drawing-58.jpg)
Sana Qadar: Just a quick warning there are sounds and descriptions of surgery later on in this episode.Īnn Miller: When you take a deep breath, you could hear this rush of air going down into your lungs, and then your lungs expand.