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Do you remember those audio tests you had to do at elementary school?

The ones where the tones change pitch and speed and you raise your hand every time you hear something different?

Well, from Matt Hay, this childhood right of passage is where it all started.

I never raised my hand enough in the whole like tone test.

I can even remember sometimes raising my hand because I felt like it had been too long since I heard a tone.

So I was just making it up.

Matt faked his way through hearing tests for years as a kid. He just ignored the fact that his hearing was not as good as everyone around him.

And then when he was 18, he applied to West Point for college. He had to go to Fort Knox for the physical.

And I failed. I got a letter from the government that had failed because of a substandard auditory acuity.

But still, he ignored what was happening until he couldn't hear people on the phone. He went to see a new audiologist.

And she said, you know, your results were just kind of like really weird. I'd like you to have an MRI.

Like, nobody goes into an audiogram and comes out with a diagnosis of getting an MRI.

The scan showed two tumors in his head, pushing up against his left and right hearing nerves.

Doctors diagnosed him with a rare condition called neurofibromatosis type 2.

The effects one in 40,000 people and like we had never heard of it because why would anybody have heard of it?

Within a year, he was basically deaf in his left ear. The tumors in his brain were getting bigger.

A couple years after college, his right ear started to falter.

Everything grew really fast. I mean, it went from non-issue to major issue.

Matt went back to the doctor. At first, this visit seemed like all the others.

You know, the same generic pictures on the wall, the same generic wax paper on the table that they make you sit on.

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