By Kelley Tuthill
Dartmouth, MA (WCVB/CNN) - Imagine constantly hearing your heart beat, your lungs inhaling, even your eyes moving.
It is the ordeal a Massachusetts man dealt with everyday for 10 years.
A rare hearing disorder magnified every sound his body made.
For 10 years Manny Pavao was tormented by the sounds in his own body.
"Just the constant beating of my heart," said Manny. "You try to move your eyes back and forth and you hear your eyes move as if you were rubbing sandpaper on a piece of wood back and forth. Cha, cha, cha, cha."
Communicating with his wife and daughter was a challenge.
"Talking, it was as if I was talking through a speaker that was blown out," he said.
For years doctors couldn't figure out what was going on. Manny became depressed and lonely.
"I saw it over the years take-take a lot of the happiness away for him, be at parties and he'd be off trying to just deal with it. And it was difficult-difficult to watch," said his wife, Lisa Pavao.
Then one night Lisa was watching the news.
"And all of a sudden, just out of the clear blue they said they were going to tell this story of a woman who heard her heartbeat in her ear," she said.
Stunned, the Pavaos realized she had what Manny had, and more importantly, there was a cure.
"It was hope, something he had not had in all those years, you know, and it was amazing," said Lisa.
Doctors as Mass Eye and Ear determined that Manny had a rare condition caused by a tiny hole in a bone that separates the inner ear from the brain.
"The condition is called superior canal dahisince syndrome. It's common that it gets initially missed because it resembles many more common conditions of the ear like allergies or estauchan tube dysfunction," said Dr. Daniel Lee.
Manny's CAT scan shows the hole in the superior semi-circular canal. Last Tuesday Dr. Lee performed a four hour brain surgery to fix it.
"We identify the hole under the surgical microscope. We then plug the hole and then repair the other holes with his own tissues," said Dr. Lee.
And incredibly, as soon as Manny woke up from surgery, he experienced something he hadn't had in years: peace and quiet.
"It wasn't until the next day when I started walking and I just stopped in the middle of the corridor and I think I broke down. I says, 'I can't hear my footsteps,'" said Manny.
At only age 44, Manny is ready to get back to work and back to enjoying life again.
"Looking forward to the second phase of my life," said Manny.
WCVB/CNN