A Chance Encounter

At age 9 I could have no idea that the sound sensitivity my mom’s new husband had would also affect me, and more severely, before I even graduated from high school—hyperacusis.

By Jerad J.D. Rider

“Rare” is often the word that speculators write in forums, support groups, and even medical circles regarding hyperacusis’s prevalence, a cruel condition where the sounds of daily life are felt as loud or painful—or both, in many cases. 

These different types of hyperacusis warp acoustic worlds: loudness hyperacusis, where the world is acoustically cranked, as if the volume is stuck at a deafening level; and pain hyperacusis (noxacusis), causing burning, stabbing, aching, and/or radiating cramps, triggered by certain sounds or almost every sound and sinking their claws into the close surroundings of the ears, such as the cheeks and jaw areas. 

When coming across these conditions, they undoubtedly feel rare, like finding a needle in a haystack. But if they’re rare, how rare? No one really knows, and scientific data needs to answer that. 

Jerad with his older brother and mom, around the time Ken (below) became his stepfather, and inadvertently introduced him to sound intolerance conditions, which Jerad now lives with.

If you have hyperacusis, though, a random, chance encounter of meeting another with it too is likely rather slim. Not impossible, but most improbable, as even ENTs will often reveal that they’d never met a hyperacusis patient in the course of their careers lasting several decades. 

And they should have the highest probability of meeting such a person. That shows you how rare that hyperacusis must be.

With that in mind, I have a story to share with you that’s really quite remarkable, and it’s about my own chance encounter when I was just a kid: I randomly met someone with pain and loudness hyperacusis, and not just any person—he was my stepdad at the time, a big part of my childhood. 

This was long before I myself experienced these ear conditions. In 1994, when Ken became part of our lives, I was only 9, and later would acquire loudness hyperacusis and pain hyperacusis in my sophomore year of high school, when I was 17 years old.

Nowadays they’re so severe I haven’t left my house in over three years—because when I do, these two hyperacusis conditions permanently worsen, even when using ear protection such as earplugs and earmuffs. The burning and stabbing sensations from riding in a car, nature’s assortment of singing birds, and even simple conversations are just a few examples of my crippling condition. 

Simply rubbing my head sounds too loud to me, causing pain. It also causes my tinnitus to spike (which yes, I have too—hyperacusis and tinnitus often occur together). These conditions cripple life because the sounds of life are everywhere and independent of what you yourself do. Everything in life is tied to sound, isn’t it? 

But I think it is uncanny how by sheer happenstance, I had randomly encountered a person with these same conditions, a 40-something construction worker who over the course of several months wooed my mother while dining at Shoney’s, her waitressing job in Columbus, Ohio. They started to date and eventually married.

Ken was a tall and bulky charmer with a bald head and goatee, and he was very forthright. After the marriage he confided to my mom that he had developed a mild to moderate sound intolerance from frequent loud exposures in his construction job, from bulldozers, claw hammers, jackhammers, etc.

My brother Daniel and I learned of Ken’s aversion to sounds not long after we moved into his house. One day we were filming with our VHS camcorder upstairs, lightly running on the floor, and that created a racket.

Ken quietly came up the stairs and with a face of fierce disgust subdued by calm control to block a noise showdown, he spoke softly: “Please don’t run up here. It makes a lot of noise.” 

So then we tried our very best to honor his request, yet as the months unfolded, Daniel and I discovered that it didn’t take a lot to cause noise, and Ken became more vocal, angrier with every plea. Understandable to me now.

Our mom also told us to keep the noise down, and relayed the information the best she could. Ken didn’t call it hyperacusis. Before the Internet, most were unaware that “hyperacusis” was the term for his condition, and “noxacusis” hadn’t been coined yet. 

Jerad, his mom, and brother in a recent photo.

Ken just described it as a “sensitivity to certain noise frequencies with pain inside the ears and some things sounding louder.”

After four years of marriage, Ken and Mom divorced, not because of the hyperacusis—it was other things. But four years after that, I myself experienced mild pain and loudness hyperacusis (also mild tinnitus) after an ototoxic reaction from an acne medication. My conditions grew to a severe level in 2022.

Now I could understand Ken, thinking, Ahh, so that was why he always spoke so softly, since raising his voice would've triggered pain. 

That was why Mandy and Bo—his two golden retrievers—irked him when they barked their heads off every day. 

That was why Ken was never loud, never slapping mugs on a counter or clanking silverware. That was why the thumping racket of "footbeats" hitting carpet or hardwood tortured him. 

Yes, indeed. This all made total sense.

Looking back, I often wonder if my meeting Ken was more than chance, like an omen for a little boy, a godhead’s proclamation: Hey, there’s a storm coming, something big, and if you don’t acknowledge it, you’ll wind up like Kenneth, boy. Maybe that was accurate, or maybe it was nothing more than just a chance encounter.

The good news is that Ken's life went on happily. He remarried, enjoyed retirement, and didn't pass until 2020, from cancer. He was 68. He never knew that I developed these conditions, too, over 20 years ago. We didn't stay in touch, but after his death I learned his life had been fulfilling by reading his obituary online. 

I was glad his ear conditions didn't worsen to the point of swallowing his precious life and ending it a tragedy. He ended on a high note, and that’s what he deserved.

Jerad J.D. Rider is the president of Hyperacusis Central, which raises awareness of hyperacusis and co-occurring ear conditions. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

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