By Jerad J. D. Rider

In 2024, Gene Dillon completely recovered from pain and loudness hyperacusis, and reactive tinnitus. The eventual key to his success started in the past, long before he ever encountered his severe conditions, as a 20-something student doctor sat inside a library—Travis Von Tobel, Gene’s future doctor.

The Magic in the Library

It was 1994, and Monday’s sunshine was streaming through the casement windows of the library. It hugged the rows of dominos inhabited by many books with multicolored covers. Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Hughes, Hemingway, and King—many, many authors—lived among the bookshelves, calling out to readers. The room was quiet but replete with active stimulation: the rustles of the pages turned and all the books removed from shelves, people deep in literature, even some distractions. The gentleman aspiring to be a future doctor couldn’t help but notice that abandoned on his table was a health-themed magazine. Its former reader had refrained from putting it where it belonged—on its usual rack behind the comic books. And so its cover drew the focus of the student’s roaming eyes, reached for their attention and succeeded in the act, the front end of the magazine becoming animated, as if the gal who occupied its high-sheen coated paper were of three dimensions, jutting out, middle-aged and wincing, plugging both her earlobes with a set of index fingers, her messy strings of brunette hair accentuated to portray the stress put on her life, joined by this heading inked in giant bold black letters: THE NIGHTMARES OF HYPERACUSIS.

Unsure of what to make of it the student picked it up, intrigued and itching for an answer to its drawing presence. He’d never heard of hyperacusis but discerned it must be hell if such a well-known magazine would splash it on their cover with a word as strong as NIGHTMARES. A read-through would confirm his hunch, moving him inside. Hell indeed, he thought. It made him eyeball hyperacusis with a microscope, trying hard to understand its pathogenesis. As time went on he made a vow, formed a proclamation, as if some apparition from a yet-to-be existence had leaned in and whispered in his ear You have an obligation . . . listen very carefully. It had made a strong impression on his problem-solving mind; that kept him invested in determining its cause. He couldn’t quite explain it but its undertones pervaded him and he thought Yes, I’ll help a patient suffering from hyperacusis if the opportunity presents itself to me. I’ll try to bring their hearing back to what it used to be. If I get the chance. Eventually he did . . . several decades down the road. Thirty years, in fact.

Enter Gene Dillon/Present Day

It’s 2025. He’s a 60-year-old in Jacksonville, Florida, and pastored a non-denominational Christian church for 28 years. He went through hell. Beat it. Had a lot to lose when crossing its domain, including those he loves: his 9 amazing grandchildren; wife, son, and daughter, both adults now. Many, many hobbies: fishing, walks in nature, dining out, etc. Bonding with humanity, and the god he worships: the Holy Trinity. Everything important. Gene’s a people person, and with these ear conditions being cripplingly present, it made it near impossible to have a social life; to give folks positivity when he was so imprisoned. People missed his presence. What others tend to notice most about this man’s appearance is his welcoming demeanor, his smile and that twinkle in his conscientious eyes, not his silver slicked-back hair or salt-and-pepper beard.

But how did Gene recover? To know we must retrace the steps which led to 2025, back in 2024, where his story started like most hyperacusis stories do: without warning.

“I’m not quite sure what triggered it all,” Gene said. “I think the COVID-19 vaccine had something to do with it.”

(Naming a COVID-19 vaccine as the culprit for hyperacusis or tinnitus ties into a trend observed through different patient stories on Hyperacusis Central—i.e., Travis Henry and Wesley Dhadamus, and now, Gene Dillon.)

“After I got the vaccine, I felt like there was something funny going on with my ears. They just felt weaker overall, like a dam about to burst or something. And then I had a sound trauma a little over a month later. That could have been ‘the burst.’ It was a loud squelch noise coming through my phone while holding it up to my right ear, but in my opinion it should not have been long enough to hurt me, and it was only in that one ear, not both, and I had hyperacusis and tinnitus in both following the incident. So that was odd to me. I guess it makes sense that both things were probably responsible: the vaccine making me vulnerable and the sound trauma breaking the dam, so to speak. I just don’t know.

“I had both loudness hyperacusis and pain hyperacusis. Symptoms quickly escalated to severe. At first I was able to go to restaurants using noise-canceling headphones, but not long after I became severe and could not even go with those. I had zero sound tolerance. It was instant pain when hearing something loud, then delayed burning pain with normal, everyday sounds. My ears would feel very full with 24-hour burning, as if a branding iron were pressing on them hard. My sound sensitivity would go up more and more when exposing to sounds. It was madness.”

“I also had extreme reactive tinnitus that worsened with sound exposures. Multitonal and musical. All the tones were very loud.

“At my worst every sound encountered sounded deafening, and every one encountered caused those pain sensations, too—at many volumes, although it seemed like sounds that came through speakers were bad at any volume. Even the slightest. I kept my phone on silent for over a year, did not watch TV at all, or listen to anything that came through a speaker. Anything culinary—plates, silverware, or glasses—was a complete nightmare. Also running water in the sink and flushing the toilet. Chirping birds and people’s voices cut through my ears with deafening pain as well, but the most devastating thing was that I could not even see my youngest grandkids anymore. Even with ear protection on their voices were too much for my ears. The older ones knew to be quiet around their grandpa, as we had educated them, but with the younger ones we could not control them noise-wise. It is much harder to expect younger children to be completely quiet. That’s just the way it is. Kids are full of joy and energy. And it’s not their fault, of course, but this broke my heart into many, many pieces, because I love them so much, and these evil conditions made them like Superman’s kryptonite. It was unconscionable.

“Pain hyperacusis shut my life completely down for over a year. Before getting it I was very active with work, around my family and grandchildren, went to church each weekend, was an avid fisherman, etc., etc., etc., but all that got affected. I could not work at all. My pastor job at a local church was affected. The last couple weeks before my retirement is when my ears started going bad. At this time I had been bivocational for a few years, meaning I worked as a pastor but also had started my own irrigation company on the side. That was compromised. Everything was.

“I could not sleep, could not eat, and lost over fifty pounds in three and a half months. My symptoms had gone from mild to extreme in a matter of two weeks. It was so bad that I could not even handle my own voice!”

The Search for Help

Gene embarked on a quest toward recovery but quickly found there wasn’t much hope to work with. He searched for help and contacted lots of doctors, yet almost all of them were “no help whatsoever.”

Gene elaborated: “All they wanted to do was run tests, things I knew would cause severe pain: hearing tests, MRIs, etc. I would not let them do it. I knew it would worsen my condition. Research and support groups cued me into that.

“My wife and I traveled to the Silverstein Institute in a desperate bid for the oval and round window surgery. We talked with Dr. Nayak, but were completely devastated when he told us that surgery wouldn’t help a case as bad as mine. I felt like I had lost all hope in getting better then. My faith in Jesus Christ and love for all my family were the things that kept me trudging along, yearning for reprieve.

“After months of searching for help, a miracle transpired. My son asked me about a doctor that we did an irrigation job for at his house (yes, my son worked for me, too, at my company). I told him that that particular doctor only specialized in pain management, and that the best ear doctors in the country said they couldn’t do anything to help my ears. I said it would be a waste of our time to call this doctor. Thank God he did not listen to my nonsense. He texted Dr. Travis Von Tobel here in Jacksonville, Florida. Travis texted him back, telling him to get me in his office as soon as possible, that he thought he could really help. Help? Yeah, right. No, I wasn’t buying it, but went to the appointment so my family would be satisfied, not believing anything would truly come from it. I was dead wrong.”

“At the appointment Dr. Travis walked in the sterile white examination room with his friendly smile, thick-rimmed glasses and business-casual look, and indicated he’d been waiting for someone like me for decades. What? I thought, jerking my head and second-guessing what I’d heard. He carefully continued, speaking rather softly since I had my sensitivity: ‘Gene, you don’t know this about me, but I am a pain management doctor, and my specialty is in the nerves of the head and brain.’ Me internally: Okay, that’s fine and dandy, but still I’m not convinced. You have to understand, I had been through so much suffering and negativity; these conditions were an absolutely barren landscape when it came to treatment options. So yeah, I was a doubter. Who wouldn’t be?

“The doctor went on with a story, as if our meeting here had been the work of fate, a jolting revelation that some 30 years before, when he was just in med school and was studying in the library, going about his business, he happened to notice that someone had left a magazine on his table. On its outside cover in big bold letters it said THE NIGHTMARES OF HYPERACUSIS. He picked it up and read the article, because he had never heard of hyperacusis or noise sensitivity inducing pain or overwhelming loudness. He was intrigued and began to study hyperacusis. After thorough research for a lengthy period, he thought that these physically torturous ear symptoms might have more to do with the brain and the nerves in the head than they do the ears themselves, and he drew the conclusion that helping a patient with them might be feasible. He remarked, ‘Gene, that was 30 years ago. You’re the first person I’ve ever met with these conditions.’

“By the end of our appointment he pitched the prospect of doing experimental injections on the different nerves in my head. I agreed. He tried a few that didn’t work. Then he did one called an SPG block. That one did work. The miracles had started.”

What’s an SPG block?

A sphenopalatine ganglion block is used by doctors to target a set of nerves that exist behind the nose and above the mouth. A local anesthetic is injected—usually lidocaine or bupivacaine, and sometimes phenol, ethanol, or steroids—and the goal is to disrupt and calm those complex nerves to see if they’re responsible for certain health conditions, such as headaches or migraines, facial pain, trigeminal neuralgia, and in this case, pain hyperacusis, loudness hyperacusis, and tinnitus (Barrow Neurological Institute, 2022).

“It was a simple procedure, really. He went through my nose and past my sinus cavity, and injected the block. I lay still on the table for 15 minutes, per his instructions, with my head down and feet up. When he got me off the table, I broke down and started crying right there in his office. For the first time in over a year, all my burning pain was completely gone. Completely! When I went in his office I had zero sound tolerance to anything. It was 25% better within the first 45 minutes to an hour after the injection. It was absolutely amazing!

“The doctor then told me in three weeks the plan was to do an ablation of those nerves. Thankfully he never had to do the ablation since my improvement held and continued climbing. As the weeks progressed my tolerance was 75% better and still I had zero burning pain.”

Gene’s Clomipramine Experience

In addition to the SPG block, Dr. Von Tobel prescribed a medication called clomipramine at Gene’s request, since Gene had researched and discovered that a patient of hyperacusis in Germany had had success with the drug.

Clomipramine is a serotonin-increasing tricyclic antidepressant that is sometimes used as an off-label treatment for different types of chronic pain, like neuropathy, facial pain, back pain, etc. (Robertson, 2021) Gene’s doctor reiterated his belief that these hearing symptoms have more to do with the brain and certain nerves than they do the ears, and that that’s why clomipramine could possibly help.

As noted in a study that Hyperacusis Central’s Scientific Advisor Kelly Jahn was part of, the general efficacy of pharmaceuticals for pain hyperacusis is mixed (Jahn, Kashiwagura, and Yousuf, 2025). Click HERE to read it. And testimonies outside of medical literature have also reported that ear-related symptoms worsened instead of improved when trying different drugs, sometimes permanently. Clomipramine, however, is a drug that many individuals have buzzed about in the hyperacusis community, declaring it is much more helpful than many medications, although its mechanisms need to be researched to determine why, and to also pinpoint why it worsens some unlucky souls (it is tinnitus that is sometimes cited by sufferers in support groups, who note that theirs got worse with this specific drug and that it was unmendable, and sometimes eye conditions such as photophobia and visual snow syndrome). In our recent interview with the author of The Hyperacusis and Misophonia Book, James A. Henry, PhD, he speculated that genetics may play a role in determining whether one has a positive, negative, or neutral reaction to a drug. Click HERE to read that interview.

Gene said: “I took clomipramine for almost two years, and just got off it a couple weeks ago after a slow taper. I started at 25 mg, went up 25 mg every 30 days, until I was at 150 mg. I stayed at 150 for seven months. My doctor wanted me to taper slowly, slower than how I had went up. When I came down, I was dropping 25 mg every 60 days. The doctor had me come off of it slowly because he said it’s almost like tricking the brain when you do it that way; it normalizes things, and transitions the brain into a state where it doesn’t need it anymore.

“My tinnitus would go up momentarily when I went up in dosage. It would always go back to baseline within a few days. It stopped affecting my tinnitus after I got to 100 mg. Other side effects included having dry mouth, constipation, and an increased appetite for sweets.

“As I took the drug, I noticed that improvements were coming with all my ear symptoms more and more. I almost couldn’t believe it. After everything I had been through, to go from that to this was just surreal. Praise the Lord, you know?

“Fast forward to the present: the miracles prevailed. I can report that after getting the SPG block and taking clomipramine, I am 100% better. Not 90, not 95 . . . 100! Zero pain, zero loudness. I no longer have musical tinnitus or reactive tinnitus. Although I still have mild ringing, it seems like the only time it gets louder now is if I drink a lot of caffeine or something of that nature. It’s very stable usually. It really is remarkable that I am back to normal. A lot of people who get better from these conditions retain mild forms of them; they don’t climb out of the hole completely. I did except my mild tinnitus, which is no big deal because it’s mild, not the severe cacophony that some permanently get. I know what that’s like because mine was bad before. So I feel blessed but sad for those people.

“I didn’t have to get repeat SPG blocks to keep my improvement, and as I said I’m off clomipramine completely. I can’t thank Dr. Travis Von Tobel enough. Meeting him was providence. He’s such an awesome doctor.

“Those meds were godsends. And I know that not everyone can take them. With clomipramine I have seen in the hyperacusis community that some have had interactions with it that were bad, like a worsening of their ear symptoms or other health conditions, such as tinnitus or photophobia or visual snow syndrome. Yet many have improved with it. More improved than worsened . . . that was the consensus. And it might just depend on what is causing your hyperacusis. I think it’s worth exploring at the very least for anyone who’s suffering. Like I’ve told my wife many times, if these treatments could help a single person, and my testimony helps that person find their way to recovery, it was worth every single minute of pain that I endured. I want to help people.

“I feel very humbled that I am free from this ordeal. I’m thankful to God that I am, yet I’m also sad that there are so many people who remain enslaved to these conditions even though they’ve done their best and tried to do some treatments that had failed in the end. Tragically they can’t get better, you know? And that’s why research and new treatments are needed for those who can’t. I don’t want people to read my story and think that because I got better everyone can, and if they don’t it is their own fault or something. That isn’t true and people’s bodies have different things going on. These conditions are very individual. But hopefully there are some who can benefit from these treatments like I did.”

Returning to the World

Gene endured his aural prison prior to improving, and during that monstrosity a solemn sense of disconnect from living in the world was his measure of existence, since it was truly evident that sound itself in this existence or the web of daily life takes on the role of “right-hand man.” When you’re at each other’s throats—you and sound engaging war—you are on the outs with life. Sound and life are intertwined. One begets the other.

A second chance was like rebirth. Yes, a thing of wonder, the phoenix rising from the grave to start his new beginning, returning to the world with his flight of bliss and majesty, unrestrained with freedom’s touch, cultivating dreams; a room festooned with big balloons and Gingham ribbons celebrating God’s perceived assistance in repairing the destruction. The party had commenced.

“I’m now able to be a part of society again, go back to church, see my family and grandchildren, go to restaurants, fish, and everything else that I could do before I got these ear conditions. I do not have any limitations whatsoever. I do not wear ear protection for anything except what I should have been wearing it for my whole life: mowing the grass and things of that nature. The only problem that I still have associated with age, is that my brain reacts to sound that is loud and sudden. It does not hurt in anyway and isn’t too loud, but sometimes it will make me jump and my heart will begin to race, almost like PTSD.”

“I am so blessed, so grateful, so invigorated. One of the things that was amazing to me was witnessing the love of my family. My wife was my rock through this whole thing. Very understanding. Always encouraging me to try different things to help my situation. And after a year with hyperacusis I asked my son to make sure that my grandsons were praying for me. He said, ‘Dad, we never have to remind them. They pray for you every single night before they go to bed. They have never missed one night.’ Never, he had said. . . . Such a touching word. Such a transcendental word, showing real love. The kids had been petitioning the Lord to intervene, when everything seemed out of reach and helped seemed like a stranger, yet it had been there all along. God had seen to that, with first that student doctor who had stumbled onto hyperacusis in the library in 1994. And then my family praying hard when I got these conditions. And then my son’s profound idea to contact that specific doc in 2024. The cycle was unreal.

“All the threads that God had used to make this outcome possible, make it really happen, the past and present in His plans, were remarkable. Like seriously, what are the chances that I’d cross a doctor who happened to have a lifelong itch for treating one of the rarest conditions known to man, hyperacusis, just because my business did an irrigation job for him and then my son connected that perhaps the guy could help (having no clue that said person knew of hyperacusis)? Yeah, right, you know? Hyperacusis is so rare, and then what are the chances that the treatments would actually work? SPG blocks and clomipramine are not always successful, as I mentioned before. So you add all these stars-aligning-type-of-events together and it’s like, woah, no way, this is a God thing!”

Which begged this mystic question: If God were truly cognizant that Gene would need assistance with his catastrophic ear conditions years before they happened, does that mean He had seen the prayers before the kids had ever knelt and locked their hands to issue them? Foresight from the Lord? Maybe, Gene concluded. Probably, he thought. What’s that common phrase we hear pertaining to the Lord? He works in ways mysterious. Whether God had planned it through some ancient threads of time, or simply took some lemons and provided lemonade, as that famous proverb says from author Elbert Hubbard, Gene is grateful for the fact that he is now restored, gifted with a brand new lease and second chance in life. He won’t forget the nightmares that these ear conditions were. Never for a moment. Like that special magazine the student doctor found, its heading jumping from the page to capture such despair, its words as dark as starless skies approaching 3:00 A.M., its implication on the nose since these disturbing ear conditions are indeed the construct of some undiluted nightmares, some lethal, feral nightmares, and all these nightmares need to end. Need to cease forevermore. Fade into the vastness of a realm that is unwelcomed. That telling magazine—THE NIGHTMARES OF HYPERACUSIS—told it like it is. But thankfully those evil nightmares sometimes go away. Thank God they did for Gene.

*AI (Artificial Intelligence) WASN’T used to write or edit this story.

REFERENCES

[1]. Sphenopalatine Ganglion Block. Barrow Neurological Institute. 2022. https://www.barrowneuro.org/treatment/sphenopalatine-ganglion-block/#:~:text=The%20local%20anesthetic%20works%20by,can%20be%20repeated%2C%20as%20necessary.

[2]. Robertson S. Antidepressants in Pain Management. News Medical. 2021. https://www.news-medical.net/health/Antidepressants-in-Pain-Management.aspx#:~:text=Clomipramine%20is%20a%20tricyclic%20antidepressant%20(TCA)%20that,TCAs%20are%20associated%20with%20fewer%20side%20effects.

[3]. Jahn KN, Kashiwagura ST, Yousuf MS. Clinical phenotype and management of sound-induced pain: Insights from adults with pain hyperacusis. The Journal of Pain. 27(104741);1-11. 2025. https://www.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2024.104741.