It’s Not A Festive Fourth of July When You Have Hyperacusis By Samantha Lebron

It is the Fourth of July, the weather is nice with no rain in sight, and the sun has set a few hours prior. You are with friends and family at a local outdoor location to enjoy some fireworks. Before you know it, the sky is lit up with beautiful colors. Then you glance to the side and notice a young child sitting on the ground with their hands covering their ears. You do not think much of it. You figure the fireworks are too loud for them to handle, but what if this were a full-grown adult? Would you think differently?

In the above scenario, I would be the full-grown adult covering my ears because I have a hearing disorder called hyperacusis. Hyperacusis is a rare hearing disorder that makes everyday sounds seem unbearably loud, painful, or frightening. The brain perceives sounds as loud regardless of their frequency, whether low or high. For as long as I can remember, sounds have always dictated how I go about my day. I was not diagnosed with hyperacusis until I was 25. 

Before my diagnosis of hyperacusis, my family believed it had to do with me having cerebral palsy. Moro reflex is known as the startle reflex; it is an involuntary reaction seen with newborns. It presents itself when an infant hears a loud noise or believes it is going to fall. In response, the infant will extend its arms out and arch its back. This reaction typically disappears within three to six months as the infant’s nervous system develops. However, in those born with cerebral palsy, this reflex may be exaggerated or continue for longer. For some, the reflex never disappears. Therefore, my reactions to certain sounds were the logical conclusion for my family, and it is what my doctor told them. From then on, that is what my family accepted, and they did not look into it any further. As I grew older, it felt as if the list of sounds that were affecting me was increasing with each passing day.  My reactions to them were becoming more debilitating. 

Imagine being a young child attending school. Your typical day is spent in class learning new things, playing outside with other classmates, and enjoying your lunch in the cafeteria. It seems excellent for a young child, but for me, I had to brace myself for all the sounds that affected me. Slamming doors, heavy textbooks being thrown on desks haphazardly without a passing thought, kids yelling and screaming on the playground, even if the teacher changed the inflection in their voice, and God forbid, there was a fire drill. Fire drills were the worst for me, and they still are. In elementary school, it was slightly easier to handle psychologically because most of my classmates did not notice my reaction to sounds, but in middle school, that changed.  

Suddenly, fifth grade came, and now I, along with the rest of my classmates, was in middle school. It seemed as if some of us changed overnight. Classmates now had attitudes and now noticed every little thing. In my town, there were only two middle schools, which meant all the students from fourteen elementary schools were now brought together. Depending on which side of town you resided in determined which middle school you were assigned to. Luckily for me, the handful of friends I did make in elementary school attended the same middle school as I did. Unfortunately, some of us were not assigned to the same classes. This is where I experienced bullying for the first time. It got to the point where my aunt, who raised me, had to go to the school board to get the school to intervene because I did not want to attend school. I will not go into in-depth details about the bullying that took place. As an adult, I realized that children are not born with the ability to bully others; it is a learned behavior. I do not want to put those people on blast for things that happened close to 25 years ago; just know that it hurt. On a separate instance, she had to report a bus driver who bullied me. He chose not to assist me getting off the school bus one day and told me, “Learn how to walk, I’m not helping you”. That was bullying from a full-grown adult. Adults can bully children as well. Is it right? No, but it happens. 

Aside from the psychological effects of the bullying. The psychological response to the sound around me became more pronounced as I progressed through middle school and entered high school. There was a time when we had to attend an assembly in the auditorium, which was great because we got out of class, but we had to watch something on the projector screen. I do not remember what we were watching, but I do remember the sounds were too loud to handle. I told my aide, who helped me get from class to class for mobility and liability purposes, that I had to leave the auditorium. By the time we reached the hall, I was crying and felt as if I could not catch my breath. She found somewhere for me to sit. After I calmed down some to be able to speak coherently, she asked what was wrong. All I said was, "It was too loud in there." That was the first time from my recollection that someone put a name to one of my responses to sounds – a panic attack. 

From then on, I could not handle going to certain places. Movie theaters were entirely a place I avoided due to the surround sound. For some reason, I was able to watch movies in the movie theater when I was very young. I assume it was because I did not have to hear the sounds of gunfire or bombs exploding. Disney steered away from that content decades ago. I was safe with the Disney princesses; however, the stampede scene in the 1994 version of The Lion King caused me to have a response, though. My avoidance of going places made it difficult to make friends. I was older at this point, a teenager, who no longer wanted to play outside. I wanted to do what other teenagers were doing. Go places and hang out, but the possibility of having a physical response or a panic attack was too much to risk. I was already different than my peers due to the cerebral palsy. My self-confidence was so low, and I did not have the attitude back then to say to others, “This is just something that happens, I can’t control it. Is it still okay if we hang out?” As I write this piece and think back to that time, making a statement like that would have given me just a bit more confidence in myself, and it might have changed my social life as a teenager. It would have changed my social life as an adult, but that confidence did not show up until 20 years later, unfortunately.   

As the years went by, the psychological responses became even more severe, and I socially isolated myself. This affected relationships with family, friends, and even romantic partners. In 2005, high school ended, and I chose not to go away to college. For three reasons.  Firstly, the thought of walking with a walker or crutches on a huge college campus intimidated me, and my family was so against me using a wheelchair instead. The aunt who raised me told me, “If you go back to using a wheelchair, it's as if you are going backwards.” Her thought process was that I would lose my mobility, which now, as an adult, I fully understand the concern; she just did not know how to express that in a way that did not start an argument between us. Not going away to college is one of my biggest regrets. I wish I had the confidence to say back then to her, “I’m going away to college, and I am going to use whatever I need to get around campus, even if that means using a wheelchair.” 

Secondly, we were told that some of the accommodations listed in my Individualized Education Plan (IEP) would not continue once I went to college. An IEP is a legally mandated document that outlines the special education and related services a student with a disability will receive to ensure they have access to a free and appropriate public education. It's a roadmap tailored to the student's unique needs, developed collaboratively by educators, parents, and sometimes the student themselves. For me, this meant I would no longer have an aide to help me get to and from my classes anymore, and that scared me. What I did not realize at the time was that I would not be in a crowded high school hallway with teenagers pushing me or trying to jump over my crutches, literally.  Yes, that happened, and I let those experiences hold me back from experiencing new adventures. I must mention that during this time, my family and I were unaware that Medicaid waivers could provide caregiving services in a home or a community setting. We thought they were only offered to students attending primary and secondary school.  No one mentioned the Agency for Persons with Disabilities or the term Medicaid waiver while we lived in Florida. As much as my aunt was a great disability advocate, or what Jay likes to say, a Friendly Neighborhood Super Advocate, she just did not know exactly what to ask for. I did not learn about Medicaid waivers and what they can do for people with disabilities until the family and I moved back to New Jersey in 2007. 

Lastly, it was the sounds. I was unsure what to expect in terms of sound on a college campus, and I did not want to put myself through that, so I went to a community college. It was similar to my earlier school experiences. Slamming doors, heavy textbooks being thrown on desks haphazardly without a passing thought. No kids yelling and screaming on the playground anymore. Still, I had to deal with the pitch and inflection of professors' voices being too much to handle. Fortunately, fire drills became less frequent, but sounds from something specific changed everything, and it began to dictate my life practically daily–thunderstorms.  

Thunderstorms are a natural occurrence in nature. They come and go—nothing we can do about it. When my family moved from New Jersey to Florida, thunderstorms wreaked havoc to such a degree that it practically destroyed relationships that I had with family members and others. If I were in class at college and a thunderstorm started, I would leave the classroom and either try to find a quiet spot on campus or head to a safer location off campus. This response was not good for my grades at all. 

If I were home, I would hide in my bedroom closet to block out the sounds of a thunderstorm. I remember my closet was just big enough to fit a storage tote. I put it against the right side of the closet against the wall. I filled it to the brim, so when I sat on top of it, the plastic would not bend under my weight. The closet had sliding doors, and I would occasionally slide one door open quickly enough just to peek to see during a storm if there was lightning still occurring; if so, I slammed the door shut. I did everything to block out the noise, including listening to music on my MP3 player. Metallica’s self-titled album, fondly known to fans as the black album, and Rage Against The Machine’s The Battle of Los Angeles album always got me through a storm that I spent in my bedroom closet. The statements I would receive from family members are, “You’re being ridiculous, and it is all in your head.” One time, I heard my aunt talking to my cousin on the phone. I guess my cousin asked what I was doing. She responded with “it's storming, she’s hiding in her bedroom closet again.” When someone says, “it's all in your head,” It messes with you. You start to think, is this real, or am I exaggerating all this? What I did know was that this was not how a person was supposed to function, let alone cope. 

As a result, my grades dropped, and I flunked out of college. I was highly embarrassed at the time, but I did not know how to properly cope with what was happening to me. All I knew was the fight or flight response, and I always fled. It took me 10 years to get my associate's degree. Towards the end of getting my degree, I hit a critical point. 

The hardest part in dealing with all of that was the isolation. I remember so many days sitting in my closet crying, hiding from the sound of thunder and telling my boyfriend at the time when he would call me on the phone or want to video chat, “I can’t talk, a storm is on the way. Talk to you when it's over.” At times, I would be in that closet for hours at a time with my laptop rapidly refreshing the webpage that showed the local map of weather radar to see how close a storm was. I knew this had to be annoying and frustrating for others to deal with, but it is what I had to do to get through those moments. Up to this point, family and friends just put up with my ways of dealing with sounds. Sometimes they would comment on it, but when they kept their comments to themselves, it made me feel better about myself. It made me believe that maybe they were accepting this for what it was, and perhaps I could too.

In 2010, I was living in an apartment in New Jersey that provided people with disabilities the opportunity to live independently. There were aspects of this living arrangement that I loved. I was out on my own with the support I needed when I needed it, and a family member was not watching over me. The only thing I did not like was my roommate. I will not divulge her name for her and her family’s privacy. This is when I became a firm believer in living arrangements such as these for people with disabilities; roommates have to be matched based on their level of need and be on a similar level developmentally and intellectually. I understand that most of the time, there is only a certain number of apartments for so many disabled individuals. Thus, if you have to pair people together, you may not always get the perfect match. 

When I went to my support staff and asked, “Can I please have an apartment to myself or be put with another roommate?” The answer was no. There are not enough apartments, and everyone is already assigned is what I was told. I was in a long-distance relationship at the time, and I was impatient, so when my boyfriend made the offer to move in with him, I took him up on it and left not only that living arrangement but the state the next day. I was told I could not come back to that specific living arrangement. I acknowledged this, signed the necessary paperwork, and was gone. 

No more independent living arrangements or roommates. I traded the four seasons to return to all places, specifically Florida, and Miami, to be exact. If you have made it this far in this blog post, I congratulate you. When I began writing this blog post, I was not sure what to write. That is because sharing my journey of having hyperacusis makes me feel the most vulnerable. Still, I knew if I was going to write this for the Voiceless Minority, I wanted readers to be able to imagine themselves as if they were me on this journey. Therefore, you may be asking yourself right now, “Wait, you lived in Florida, where you were hiding in your bedroom closet. Moved back to New Jersey, where the weather is calmer, to move back to Florida? Why?” The answers to those questions are that I was young and someone gave me a way out of a situation I no longer wanted to be in. Now I must remind you that at this time, my family and I still thought this was the cerebral palsy startle reflex to an extreme degree. 

When I moved to Miami, I began to experience the repercussions of my reactions to certain sounds in a romantic relationship. Being in a relationship in person versus long distance, with what was happening to me, was significantly different. Initially, when a thunderstorm occurred at home, I did not want to hide in a closet. It was one thing to do that when I was living with family, but it is a whole other thing when you are living with a significant other. During a typical thunderstorm, I would immediately go to the bedroom, lie in bed with my music of choice blaring in my ears, and cry until the storm passed. He would hold me in support, but we lived in the lightning capital of the world, which means it storms a lot. Floridians like to joke that you can tell when it is going to rain just by looking at the time. One time, it was storming, and I did my typical routine, but he did not follow me immediately at first. A few minutes later, he came into our bedroom and said, “I know this is something you can’t control, but I can’t hold you every time there is a thunderstorm or fireworks, so when it's over, I’ll be in the living room.” 

I knew at this point I could not keep coping like this anymore; something had to be done. His friends became my friends, and when they would ask us, “Hey, you want to go out with us?” The response from him would be, “Is it a place that Sam can handle?” If it were not, he would stay home no matter how many times I told him, “Do not stay home because of me, go out with your friends.” He insisted he did not want me to feel left out. 

Even when I came to visit him for the first time a year prior, he thought he had done something wrong. Leading up to this point, I did not tell him how severely certain sounds affected me. His group of friends was meeting me for the first time, and they wanted to go to the movies. The one place I avoided for years, but I went along with it. It was a large group of us, so we were late arriving at the movie theater, and the only seats left were in the front row. The movie was The Hangover. He tried to hold my hand the entire time, but I did not reciprocate because both of my hands were busy covering my ears due to the surround sound discreetly. Luckily, we were in the dark, so he could not see what I was doing. Sadly, I could not laugh during the movie, and I made someone feel as if they had done something wrong. 

After the movie was over, he pulled me away from the group for a minute and asked, “Did I do something wrong. I was trying to hold your hand in there, and you wouldn’t.”

I told him, “No, you did nothing wrong, I will explain later when we go back to your house.”

When I was 25, that boyfriend and I were still together. Our friends would come over all the time and hang out with us in our efficiency, which was a slight upgrade from a studio apartment in the back of a house two streets away from where his grandparents lived. Our friends knew which places I could handle and which ones I could not, which greatly limited our options for going out. It was one thing to isolate myself socially, but to cause another person to do it because of me was my breaking point. Yes, it was his choice not to go places, but I felt it was not fair to put him through this, and if it continues, it may cause us to break up. 

At this time, I was in the eligibility process to receive services from Vocational Rehabilitation. Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) is an organization designed to help individuals with disabilities prepare for, secure, retain, or regain employment. I was not assigned a counselor yet, but I did share during the intake process that something may be wrong with my hearing. They said they could assist with that and sent me to a specialist for a check-up. 

Due to my mentioning that I had a concern about my hearing during the intake process, they assigned me to the VR unit specifically for the deaf and hard of hearing, even though I was not deaf or hard of hearing but as a result they sent me to two specialists; an otolaryngologist more commonly known as an ear, nose, and throat doctor or ENT for short and the other specialist was an audiologist. I went to the ENT first, and everything checked out, and I received a good bill of health. My appointment with the audiologist did not go as I expected. I thought the audiologist was going to tell me, “You’re good, there is nothing wrong with you.” I would have to go back to living a depressing, debilitating life of isolation, affecting everyone around me.

The appointment began with her asking questions about my health and family history. I explained to her, in a nutshell, how certain sounds affected me, and the time it took to tell her was much shorter than the length of this blog, but I digress. Then she asked me what sounds bothered my ears. I began to rattle off the ones that affected me the most: “Fireworks, thunder, slamming of doors, motorcycles, surround sound in movie theaters, if people change the inflection of their voice or suddenly yell…” 

I got to a point while listing that I stopped and asked, “What time do you close? Because I can go on with this list for a long time.” She smiled, stopped writing notes, and led me to what looked to me like a sound booth. It reminded me of the typical studio that music artists use to record music, just on a smaller scale. I was sitting in a chair, and she handed me a pair of headphones and explained that she was going to be outside the room. I was instructed to put the headphones on.

Before she left, I said, “Oh, I’m not deaf or hard of hearing; they already sent me to someone to confirm that.” 

She replied, “I know, I am not checking to see if you can hear in a traditional sense, I am checking to see which frequencies and pitches of sound affect you.” 

For a brief second, instead of being nervous, I was elated. Someone was not dismissing this. Someone was not telling me it was “all in my head”. Someone was not just putting up with me and my antics; they were doing something about it. 

Before she shut the door, she said, “I know this will be very uncomfortable for you. You have learned to deal with this the only way you know how. By trying to appear as if nothing is wrong, but it is critical that you are honest, and you don’t try to act as if the sound doesn’t bother you.” 

I nodded my head, and she left the booth and shut the door. All of a sudden, I heard her voice. I did not know there was a speaker in the booth, but she began to explain the process that was about to take place. I would hear beeps at various pitches and frequencies in each ear separately. All I had to do was let her know if it caused discomfort. The exam was short in its duration. The sound of the different beeps was too much, but I was honest. I did not grit my teeth and push to go further than what I could handle, for the first time probably in my life. Once the exam concluded, she retrieved me, and that part of the appointment was over. The second exam, she explained, was going to measure what exact frequencies caused my ears discomfort. The console used to perform that had many buttons, and to me, it looked like it belonged in a spaceship. After she conducted that exam, we went back into her office. 

Then I heard a word that would change my life forever. Hyperacusis. She explained to me what it was. A rare hearing disorder that makes everyday sounds seem unbearably loud, painful, or frightening. The brain perceives sounds as loud regardless of their frequency, whether low or high. My response to hearing this was absolute relief. I cried in her office for a while, and she let me. After collecting myself, I asked. “So, this is not the CP startle reflex. It's something completely separate from that. It's not all in my head, and I’m not going crazy.” 

“No, this is a rare disorder that only affects 1 in 50,000 people. Please do not take this the wrong way, but you’re lucky compared to some of my other patients. Some never leave their home. For some, those with hyperacusis can’t even handle talking on the phone because the sound is too much, or they prefer to live in a basement because it drowns out sound,” she replied. 

The next question I wanted to ask felt as if I were sitting in the front row of a rollercoaster waiting for the first drop to happen. “Is there a cure?” The answer was no; there is no cure for hyperacusis. As devastating as it was to know that there was no cure for this disorder that has been with me constantly for as long as I can remember I left her office that day feeling a sense of peace because now I knew what was happening to me, and it was not “all in my head”. 

Just because I now could put a name to what was happening to me did not mean my symptoms disappeared, no matter how I wished that to be so. It gave me something to research because I now knew what to search for. Every chance I got, I searched the internet for hyperacusis. The audiologist said it was rare and that not many specialists specialize in the disorder. Not many people come forward to express what is happening to them due to the psychological effects and social stigma. The protocols for dealing with hyperacusis are outdated, mainly because there is not enough research being done about the disorder. I looked up the contact information for any audiologists I could find in the country and asked if they knew about hyperacusis. I would send lengthy emails sharing my experience and essentially beg for their help. Most of the responses I received stated that they could not help me, there was no cure, and that they wished me the best. 

What I am about to share with you, readers, is something I shared with absolutely no one. You may sympathize with me, or you may feel pure outrage, but as I mentioned earlier in this blog, I want whoever is reading this to imagine themselves in my place on this journey. To that, I must share all of it. During my research, I came across a research paper that I do not recall the title of or its author(s), so I cannot share it, nor do I want to share it. It goes on to explain hyperacusis research that involves the cochlear implant. For those who know where this is leading, I understand if you just audibly gasped in horror. If you have done so, it means you have read everything up to this point, unless you skimmed it due to its length, which I hope you have not. 

For those who do know what a cochlear implant is, it is a surgically implanted electronic device that helps people with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss perceive sound. Unlike hearing aids, which amplify sound, cochlear implants bypass the damaged parts of the inner ear and directly stimulate the auditory nerve with electrical impulses. This allows the brain to interpret these signals as sound.

The following email I sent to a specialist included the same excerpt as in the previous ones, with one addition. The information that I saw in this research paper. The reply I received back was outrage, and understandably so. I had asked a specialist if this was possible, and if so, could it eliminate the hyperacusis. For those who have not connected the dots yet, I asked this doctor, via email, if having a cochlear implant would remove my hyperacusis. He angrily replied, “How dare I ask to become deaf!” There was more to the email. Afterwards, I was utterly ashamed, but I was desperate for anything not to live this way anymore. I have not researched hyperacusis since that day. 

It was the Fourth of July in 2014, and my boyfriend and I had moved out of our efficiency apartment and moved in with his grandparents. We were in our bedroom, he playing a video game and I in bed listening to my music on my phone at full volume on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. The rest of the family was enjoying themselves outside our bedroom, eating and setting off fireworks. His youngest brother knocked on the door of our bedroom and came in. The conversation went like this. 

“Sammy, I feel terrible that you can’t be out there with the rest of us enjoying the fireworks. Do you think the noise-canceling headphones they use at gun ranges would help?” 

I replied, “I don’t know.”

“If you’re ok with it, I’ll go to a store right now and get you a pair,” he said. 

I told him to get a pair, and we will see if they work or not. When he got back and handed them to me, I slowly put them on. They were not the size of typical headphones one would use to listen to music. They had thick ear cups that surrounded my ears and had a hard-case shell on the outside. Once I put them on, all the sounds around me became muffled. It was as if I were in a different world—a world I could handle. I could still hear the fireworks happening outside, but it was as if they were much further away. 

“Sammy, can you hear me?” My boyfriend’s brother asked. 

With a big smile on my face, I said, “Yes, I can hear you and deal with the fireworks!” 

Those noise-canceling headphones are my lifeline when the world's sounds become too loud for me to handle. They changed my life for the better. It is not a cure for hyperacusis. Is it a better way to cope with hyperacusis? For me, it is. I can do things and go to places that I would not have dared to go to in the past. I used them while at college. Yes, I went back to school again, but this time, when sounds got to be too much for me, I did not leave the classroom. I would just put on my headphones. Did people stare at me, sure, but for once, I was not doing something for someone else’s comfort; it was for my own. I did not care what others thought, even if I looked like an air traffic controller. I finished my associate's degree partly due to those noise-canceling headphones. They came in real handy while I was studying when others were around, and when I wanted to drown out audible distractions while completing tests. 

Now it's ten years later, the same amount of time it has taken you to read this blog. I still wear the noise-canceling headphones when I need to. Fireworks, most definitely, and thunderstorms when they are really strong. The noise-canceling headphones with the larger earmuffs can be uncomfortable to sleep with. Luckily, they also make earbud versions now. I will always use the larger ones for fireworks, though. Depending on how loud fireworks get, I will wear both simultaneously by putting in my noise-canceling earbuds and then my larger noise-canceling headphones over them. It does the trick. 

There have been many life changes since I got my hyperacusis diagnosis thirteen years ago. The boyfriend I had when I got my diagnosis is no longer with me. I am with someone else now. You may know him; he’s your friendly neighborhood super advocate. One of the first dates we went on was to a concert to see a Motley Crue cover band, and I warned him, “I’m going to wear both sets, the noise-canceling earbuds and the headphones. I may not be able to hear you.” 

“That’s fine, I just want you to enjoy yourself, and you do that however you need to,” was his reply. 

Before this, the last concert I went to was Dido at Jones Beach in an outdoor arena in 8th grade. A cousin won the tickets from a radio station and gave them to me as a graduation present because I was a fan of hers, and one of her songs was the theme song of the original Roswell television series. I was obsessed with her and the show. Still, the concert was as calm as it gets, plus it was outside. The sound had somewhere to travel, and it was easier to deal with. Dido versus Motley Crue–they don’t compare at all, but my plan worked. I enjoyed the concert. I was worried when they broke for intermission, though, because Jay, at the time, was trying to get my attention, but I could not hear him over the music and my noise-canceling headphones. Of course, my thought process immediately turned to “Is he going to be offended? Is this going to cause us to break up?” The house lights came on, and people began to leave their seats either to get drinks or use the restroom. 

Worriedly, I turned to him and said, “I’m ok, this is great!”

“What!” he shouted at me, and I repeated myself. 

“What!” he shouted again, and I had to laugh to myself. The music was so loud that he could not hear the conversation at a normal volume. Suddenly, I was not worried anymore. I knew we would be just fine. We attend concerts whenever we can. This year, we have seen Rascal Flatts and attended Rock the Country – Kid Rock’s music festival so far. On my own, I have seen Creed, 3 Doors Down, and Finger Eleven. I even go to movie theaters now…in the front row. Jay is a huge Wicked fan, so we went and saw Wicked when it came out. What Jay does not know is that the last time I went to a movie theater was in 2015, before I had noise-canceling headphones. They were doing a special showing in select movie theaters across the United States to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of The Breakfast Club. I’m a fan, and I begged a friend to come with me. Either it was because the movie was old, and the volume did not seem as loud to me, or I just really wanted to go; needless to say, I went anyway. Seeing Wicked was a test, though, to see if the headphones could help me deal with surround sound, and they did.  

For anyone reading this, I hope I expressed myself in such a way that allowed you to imagine what it must feel like to have this hearing disorder, not just on a physical level, but a psychological one. This is a disorder that I would not wish upon my worst enemy, truly. If you know someone who experiences the same symptoms as I described above, I am begging you to share this blog with them. The research done for this disorder is so little, and the lived experience is a brutal one. As I write these last few sentences in tears, I thank you for reading about my journey to a diagnosis. I have included some resources below, including links to the headphones I use, for anyone who may need them. 

Until my next blog for The Voiceless Minority, your other Friendly Neighborhood Super Advocate, Samantha.  

Resources: 

Hyperacusis: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24320-hyperacusis

Reusable Earplugs: Reusable Earplugs

3M Noise-Canceling Headphones: 3M Noise-Canceling Headphones