A mother has revealed she is 'tortured' by her unusual condition which means she can hear her own eyeballs move.
Pam Roberts is one of only hundreds of people in the world to be diagnosed with superior semicircular canal dehiscence (SSCD).
She can constantly hear her food digesting, blood pumping, muscles and bones moving, heart beating and even her own breath echoing in her head.
The 49-year-old said she is a 'shadow of the person' because of the condition and has now become a recluse because of the extreme dizziness she suffers.
Pam Roberts, 41, is 'tortured' due to a rare condition that means she constantly hears the deafening sounds of her stomach digesting and eyeballs moving
The mother-of-three said she is a shadow of the person she used to be due to the diagnosis of superior semicircular canal dehiscence (SSCD)
Ms Roberts had an operation to try and fix her hearing condition, but it didn't work. She is now trying to raise money for a potentially life-changing operation in the US
Ms Roberts, from Maidstone in Kent, said: 'Mentally it's affected me in such a massive way. I withdraw all of the time. I'm just not happy anymore.
'It's horrible, a form of torture for me. I feel like running away from it all. I want to curl up in the foetal position it's so distressing for me.
'Everyday 24/7 I feel dizzy, off balance. I can hear the insides of my body.. I can hear my eyeballs moving from side to side. I can hear my stomach digesting.
SSCDS is a very rare medical condition, recently identified, where the thinning or absence of a portion of bone in the inner ear canal causes an imbalance and sensitivity to sound.
Symptoms include dizziness, vertigo, tinnitus and hearing loss.
When parts of the bone slowly dissolve, normally for unknown reasons, it exposes the superior balance canal.
This allows sound to 'escape' from the inner ear resulting in hearing loss.
With loud noises, an extreme and sudden sensation of movement (called vertigo) may result for the patient.
Source: California Ear Institute
'It's so loud and I always turn around and think people can hear it, but then I realised that nobody can hear my stomach, it's just me.'
She added: 'I know exactly when I've got an upset stomach because I can hear it in my ears so loudly. It just sounds like drains gurgling. It's a horrible noise.
'I hear my breathing like Darth Vader in my nostril. It's like I have a mouth in my ear.
'I hear my pulse, my heartbeat, like a dual beat in my ear all the time. It's like when you have an ultrasound and you hear your baby's heartbeat.
'I hear a whooshing noise which I think is my blood in my ear. I hear my voice, and I have to use the other ear for the phone because it's too distorted otherwise.
'I can hear my footsteps. I can hear my food.'
Ms Roberts first had symptoms in June 2015 after cracking her head on a ceramic bath when she fainted, creating small holes in her left ear canal.
After the fall, Ms Roberts, who owns a cleaning business, had a year of doctors crediting her symptoms to anxiety.
But eventually a CT scan revealed that the cleaning business owner had SSCD in May 2016.
Ms Roberts fainted and cracked her head on a ceramic bath which created tiny holes in her left ear canal (pictured). The condition normally occurs for unknown reasons
Doctors tried to fill in the tiny holes in her ear canal in an NHS-funded transmastoid operation, but Ms Robert's symptoms came back four months later - and worse
Ms Roberts, pictured with her children, became a recluse due to extreme dizziness and the constant 'torture' of being able to hear the mechanics of her body 24/7
This disorder, first recognised in medical literature in 1998, usually occurs for unknown reasons in older people.
Since
