"This is a pain you cannot see," Roosevelt says. "Even my sons would say to me, 'We don't understand why you have to go to the doctors with him, you baby him, he's just depressed.' My older son cannot to this day forgive himself for ever saying anything negative."

By fall 2003, DiEmilio was taking a lot of medication and working at a cable channel in Philadelphia. He moved into the basement of his aunt and uncle's house, eating separately from the family to avoid the clatter of dishes. The Roosevelts lent him a car so he wouldn't have to take the train. He wore custom earplugs to work. ("We found so many earplugs when he passed, and they would come in little bags, two in a bag," Roosevelt says.) She often accompanied him to the doctor to ask questions and take notes. "When they said, 'There is nothing wrong with you,'" — and they always did — "he would lose it, he would zone out," she says.

DiEmilio had trouble talking on the phone and typing on the computer. He took pills to sleep through the pain and his ringing ears. At last, he gave away or sold his music and his DJ equipment; his beloved Fender guitar went to his cousin Meghan.

"You saw the pain on his face all the time," Roosevelt says. "He said to me, 'Aunt Carol, I wish I had my leg chopped off, because I could still go to shows, I could still play the guitar, still hang out with my friends. My friends have all left me because they think I am a hypochondriac.'"

His emails became increasingly despondent. Everything was gone: his guitars, his equipment, his records and his friends. All he did was take medicine and wait for bedtime, he wrote to his friend Vinita Joshi in England. "Not wearing earplugs ruined my life. I blame myself for everything."

In the summer of 2006, DiEmilio landed a new job in New York for Scripps Network that, at least temporarily, brightened his outlook. He stayed with Chaiken in Harlem for a few weeks, then found his own apartment around the corner. And the move came with a bit of optimism: He had high hopes for one neurologist, then at Columbia University Medical Center. "He emailed me one day and was very excited to get an appointment," Roosevelt says. Then she heard nothing. "Finally, he wrote to say, 'He can't do anything for me.' I read that and felt like I was going to be sick."

DiEmilio's apartment was barren, barely furnished. "He was smoking a lot of pot because it helped dull some of the pain," Chaiken says. "By the end, it was terrible, he just wasn't really there. The look on his face was pain, like if someone had a tooth pulled. He didn't want to be a burden. He was almost apologetic, like, 'I'm sorry this is happening, this is all I can talk about.'"

In late October 2006, Chaiken phoned him, but got no answer, which wasn't unusual. DiEmilio didn't show up at work. On Halloween, Chaiken went to his door but couldn't get in. He headed back home around the corner. Roosevelt and her husband drove up. "I remember hearing the sirens and I just kind of knew," says Chaiken. "I said, I bet that's for Jason."

DiEmilio had erased almost everything from his computer, except for some music and information on his finances. His aunt found a plastic container with manila envelopes — he was so very neat — each labeled with the name of a different doctor. And the note, which read, in part:

I want to live and be happy. I did not want to die. But hyperacusis has completely destroyed my life. It is the sole reason as to my decision. I cannot continue to live with this. What happened to me doesn't happen to people. The irony and the cruel joke of it all is completely unbelievable. I have spent the last six years in complete disbelief. All the things that made me happy now kill me. I suffer all the time. I'm tired. I'm tired of pain, and medication, and side effects and head pain and ear pain. I am tired of being trapped and imprisoned in my body.



No one could ever possibly understand this thing that has happened to me and the utter despair, grief and sadness I feel all the time. There is never a good night, a good day, a good weekend, a good vacation. It is just torment. Every place I go is too loud. I can't listen to music even at the lowest volume. It's torture.

He signed off with a self-portrait: