Woman with Rare Medical Condition Can Hear Eyes Moving in the Sockets

A woman from Lancashire has a rare medical condition that allows her to hear noises from inside her body.

Julie Redfern, a 47-year-old mother of three, discovered her condition for the first time in 2006, while playing Tetris, a video game. She said she could hear her eyeballs moving around in their sockets, when she moved them from side to side.

She described the sensation as a "horrible" one. I could literally hear them moving, scratching - it was very weird," she added.

"It's very frustrating being able to hear everything. You think you wouldn't mind and maybe I wouldn't if it was just a bit of gossip but nobody wants to be able to hear their body constantly," Redfern told The Sun.

Doctors were initially puzzled by Redfern's claims and dismissed her symptoms as general concerns of her age group. An increasingly worried Redfern said: "I'd be in the queue at the supermarket and I'd start to sway, I felt drunk without having a drink."

Redfern desperately sought medical help for seven years, only to repeatedly run into dead ends. Fortunately though, one day she read a story on the Internet about a man with similar symptoms.

She then underwent MRI and CT scans, after which doctors finally diagnosed her with Superior Canal Dehiscence syndrome (SCD). This condition, discovered in 1998, is caused due to very tiny holes in the inner ear that allow fluids to leak into the brain.

She has since had corrective surgery on ear and has plans to undergo a similar procedure for the second. She said, after the procedure, "I couldn't have coped with it for another 40 years, seven was enough."

According to Johns Hopkins Hospital in the US, SCD is an uncommon congenital condition and there is a 30% chance of misdiagnosing the condition. The university's website describes surgical treatment involved as "plugging or resurfacing the hole in the superior canal using a patch of bone from the inside of the skull".