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Rating: 
Summary: be prepared for a difficult read-extreme, irratic, craziness
Review: -I'm posting this for Karen Lorentz I could relate to many of the feelings Carol expressed in her book. I even called her several times while I was reading the book to say, "Wow! That's exactly how I felt." Carol shared many tips that I feel are helpful to my recovery. This book is definately a help if you're suffering from hyeracusis. Karen Lorentz
Rating: 
Summary: I can relate....
Review: - I'm posting this for Karen Lorentz I could relate to many of the feelings Carol expressed in her book. I even called her several times while I was reading the book to say, "Wow! That's exactly how I felt." Carol shared many tips that I feel are helpful to my recovery. This book is definately a help if you're suffering from hyeracusis. Karen Lorentz
Rating:
Summary: I can relate
Review: - This is being posted for Karen Lorentz I could relate to many of the feelings Carol expressed in her book. I even called her several times while I was reading the book to say, "WOW-that's exactly how I felt!" She shared many tips that I feel are helping my recovery. This book is definately a must if you are suffering from hyperacusis.
Rating: 
Summary: A fellow sufferer
Review: Carol has summed up in her book what true suffering is with Tinnitus and Hyperacusis. Through her story she tells you where you can get help for this terrible affliction. Thanks to Carol I have been in touch with Dr. Jastreboff in Atlanta, and hopefully will be on my way to see him. No one can truly understand what it is like to have a constant loud ringing, whistling, or roaring sound that is constantly changing, in your head, 24 hours a day.Many people are told there is nothing you can do about this and that's not true. Thanks to Carol's story, I hope others with this probelm will read it and search out help for themsevles. There is hope! Thank you Carol for your Story.
Rating:
Summary: be prepared for a difficult read-extreme, irratic, craziness
Review: Having traveled a similar journey as Carol with hyperacusis, tinnitus, and TRT, I can honestly say the book is way too full of irratic craziness to do justice to hyperacusis and tinnitus and TRT. It is not representative of the majority of folks who have hyperacusis or tinnitus. The book is filled with many extremes that are just way too out there to be taken seriously. For sure, these conditions do make one feel off-base, wierd, and abnormal at times but I found the book a very difficult read because there was too much of the craziness and not enough down-to-earth discussion of what these conditions are really like. Sure many of us get to the point where we may contemplate suicide because of the serious life-alterations our conditions bring, but I found the author was dwelling too much on her erratic search for anything that might help without seeking advice from knowledgeable professionals or others with the same conditions. Most of us don't go to such extreme, crazy lengths but seek out others who have our conditions, search the internet, find wise and caring knowledgeable hearing professionals, and find out information that way rather than go to extremist lengths that have nothing to do with auditory concerns. She says her purpose is to tell how her life was saved by TRT but way too little of the book actually discusses TRT in even generic terms. It is like there is this huge circuitous crazed journey of a seemingly mad woman and then when she gets to the answer for her conditions she gives it, TRT, little copy. We get the picture that even after her 'cure' she is still a little out in left field. She gives the impression that TRT is a cure for everyone which even Dr. Jastreboff, the one who started and continues to research and improve TRT, says is not the case. TRT is wonderful and many of us are thankful for the reduction of life-alterations it can bring but it is not a 'cure' for all. Brook's extremism gives the impression that everyone with hyperacusis and tinnitus is as off-kilter as she is and that is not the case. People sometimes view our behaviour as strange enough when all we're doing is trying to survive in a noisy world, but she does our conditions and us no good by sensationalizing that perception. She may have thought the sensationalization would cause folks to buy her book but I know I'm not the only one who wishes I had not wasted my money on it. One can learn much more about hyperacusis, tinnitus, and TRT on various bulletin boards dedicated to these subjects and websites such as those of Pawell Jastreboff, Jonathan Hazell, Marsha Johnson, Stephen Nagler, the Hyperacusis Network, and the American Tinnitus Association. My advice is to save your money unless you're in to unrealiztic extremism which is unrepresentative of the majority of people with hyperacusis and tinnitus.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth your money/trouble ...
Review: The fear and pain the author suffered from hyperacusis and tinnitus helps me recognize and anticipate what hyperacusis is slowly doing to me and those around me. Ms. Carol Lee Brook shares: "Carol listens carefully to the refrigerator. She visualizes it alive. It roars like a lion. The washer and dryer clang like thunder. Cars outside zoom like jets. She no longer feels safe in her home.... Her hands shake. She runs to the bathroom every few minutes from nerves. Her weight is dropping while her sobbing and anxiety are mounting." Although this is not a literary masterpiece, and in my opinion, should be re-told in a non-literary style or at least first person narrative, it is worth reading if you have hyperacusis. The master craftsman Edgar Alan Poe in his short story, "The Tell-Tale Heart," describes an apparent fictional account of hyperacusis: "... very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? .... And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? --now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage." When I read this as a child, it was pure fiction. After experiencing just a little of this lonely disease, I understand nore about it after reading Ms. Brook's story--far from perfect, but close to home. After less than a month of listening to pink sound for two hours a day, I am being freed from the slow, almost imperceptible fear of sound that had been growing within me. Poe's story ends with the main character confessing to murder due to auditory hullicinations. However, Ms. Brook's ends in joy. Her book helped me understand and celebrate the joy of recovery: "Carol sits in the Orioles; stadium (baseball)... She stands for the national anthem. The sound level is fine. Carol is overwhelmed .... Her eyes are filled with tears of joy. Am I going to keep crying from everything I've missed." This description punctuated the joy I felt when I recently listened to the Chicago symphony orchestra with it's full percussion section on "full volume." If you want to know that you are not alone, that you level of discomfort is comparable to others', and that your feelings relate to the disease, I recommend that you read this book.
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