For more than a year, a 48-year-old woman in Indiana was constantly tormented by a mysterious crunching noise that doctors couldn’t fix.
Maryjane Behforouz, of Indianapolis, said the sound in her head was “like someone clicking their fingernails together, amplified by a megaphone,” the Washington Post reported. Sometimes, the problem would wake her up in the middle of the night.
She said that her hearing issues began in July 2015 when she felt a deep itch in her right ear, prompting her to forcefully press the opening closed several times.
Afterward, she said that she seemed to be experiencing hearing loss, according to the newspaper.
Behforouz then consulted two specialists, one of whom diagnosed her with sensorineural hearing loss, which is caused by nerve damage.
The doctor prescribed her with steroid injections to reduce inflammation — but then the loud clicking noise and a high-pitch ringing began, the Washington Post reported.
Behforouz visited a third specialist, but he agreed with the other doctors and wasn’t able to offer a solution.
Desperate for answers, she began searching the internet and found Dr. Konstantina Stankovic, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
“I kept feeling that there had to be a satisfactory explanation for the clicking and cause of my hearing loss,” she told the Washington Post.
Behforouz flew to Boston in September 2016 for an appointment with Stankovic, where she learned she had been misdiagnosed.
Stankovic determined Behforouz was suffering from a rare issue caused by conductive hearing loss, which surgery can correct. According to the doctor, a small bone fracture was impacting how sound was transmitted.
After an hour-long procedure, Behforouz was finally free of the crunching noise.
“I think this is very diagnosable,” Stankovic told the Washington Post. “You just have to be thinking about it. The important thing is you really have to listen to a patient.”
