What 14-year-old Cindy Redmond calls her "living nightmare" started a year ago at a friend's kitchen table in Delaware.
Her friend's stepfather, annoyed that he had to ask Cindy twice to get off her phone, unleashed an air horn into her ears. Nothing has been the same for Cindy since, People reports in a heartbreaking look at a rare hearing disorder called hyperacusis.
“Overexposure to sound does not always lead to conventional hearing loss,” one expert says. In Cindy's case, it led to sounds that are too loud and near constant pain. “When I hear a noise, I feel like I’m being stabbed in the ear," Cindy writes on her fundraising page. She also has a constant burning sensation in her ears. There is no treatment or cure for hyperacusis, also known as noise-induced pain.
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