LOS ANGELES (WPVI) -- Imagine being able to hear nearly every sound inside your body.
It's a rare, but very real condition.
One woman who went through this living nightmare is sharing her story to help others.
It's a condition called Superior Semicircular Canal Dehiscence, or SSCD.
It happens when a bone between the inner ear and the brain develops tiny holes.
About 1 in every 500,000 people have it, and it can debilitating.
For months, no matter what she was doing, Rachel Pyne never had a moment's peace.
"I can hear my heart beating and it's just like thump, thump, and my whole ear goes out," says Rachel of the endless noise in her head.
Her mother Lisa adds, "She really couldn't focus on you or speak to you and concentrate on what you were saying."
Along with the noises, Rachel was losing her balance and having severe dizzy spells.
She saw nine doctors, who thought she had everything from migraines to being overly sensitive.
Then Dr. Quinton Gopen at the UCLA Medical Center told Rachel she had SSCD.
It happens when one of the bony canals of the inner ear develops a tiny hole.
The fluid inside the canal carries sounds from the body into the hearing chamber.
"You hear your own heartbeat, you hear your own voice, you hear your own eyeballs move. and I know that sounds strange, but it's very common for these patients," says Dr. Isaac Yang, Rachel's neurosurgeon at UCLA Medical Center.
"A lot of these patients are seeking psychiatric help because they're just mentally worn out. They can't escape the condition and it really kind of grinds them down," says Dr. Gopen.
Rachel went from her home in Indiana to Los Angeles, for a minimally-invasive operation offered at UCLA Medical Center.
Instead of open brain surgery, doctors only make an opening the size of a dime.
After with a GPS-like device, they find the pinpoint-size opening, and fill it with sealer.
"It's like a heat-seeking missile, going right for the itty, bitty hole that's between the ear and the brain," says Dr. Yang.
The surgery gave Rachel instant results.
"When I woke up I just thought, Oh my gosh, it's gone," she recalls.
The doctors at UCLA Medical Center say they see up to 10 cases a month of this condition.
It is one of the few centers in the country with the state-of-the-art technology to treat it.
No one is sure what causes the condition, but it seems to be more common among middle-aged adults.