We all have artists that we’d rather not listen to. But Zoe Fennessy, a 26-year-old from England, literally can’t listen to Ne-Yo’s music — or else she’ll have a seizure.
“I’ll be walking around the supermarket doing my food shopping and I have to put my earphones in to listen to my own music just in case it comes on,” Fennessy told the Daily Mail. “It’s the same with most shops. I have to walk in with my ear phones in at first just to make sure they don’t have Ne-Yo on.”
Fennessy had her seizure in 2006, and as their frequency increased, she was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2008. A few years later, she noticed a pattern when she heard the “Give Me Everything” singer’s music.
“It took me a while to realize that they were being triggered by his songs,” she said. “It wasn’t until I’d heard it for about the 15th time that it finally twigged what was going on.”
She told her doctors, who then observed her and noticed the correlation. Whenever she would hear one of his songs, Fennessy would suffer a 15-second seizure, after which she would vomit and feel thirsty and tired. She was diagnosed with musicogenic seizures.
To try to fix the problem, she had a six-hour procedure to remove part of her left temporal lobe this past June. Though the doctors believed that her seizures originated from that portion of the brain, she’s still having seizures when she hears Ne-Yo’s songs; the symptoms of epilepsy, though, have reduced.
“People might think it is funny — and I can laugh at it myself — but it has taken over my life,” Fennessy, who hasn’t worked for six months, said. “It’s ruined my life.”
Source: MTV
