Speech Therapy

I almost didn't keep the appointment with the ear, nose, throat doctor. I still don't have my full singing range back, but its much better. I get less drop out. And I assume that the improvement will continue over time. They told me that it was a full two or three years for their opera patients to recover enough voice to continue their careers.

Still, the impact of the coming change in insurance made me decide to go just for a touch base to make sure everything is as expected. The doctor decides he can see enough just by sticking a mirror halfway down my throat so that he will not need to do a full scope. I am happy with that. But he mentions that I should see his speech pathologist, who happens to have an opening right then.

OK. It couldn't hurt, and I should do those sorts of things now while I can afford them. The speech doctor is an interesting person. He is widely read, innately curious, and an avid reader. He supports the arts even though his taste in music is more along the popular rock and roll venue. We strike up conversation that no one but musicians would find compelling and are both very involved in debate.

It turns out to be a ploy. He needs to hear me talk unselfconsciously. He stops the debate to tell me that I have what they term vocal fry. As a cancer specialist, he has seen this from systemic radiation before. Turns out the muscles supporting the voice box are weakened by the radiation as are the diaphragm muscles. So I don't get as much air moving in and out of my lungs while at the same time, the vocal cords sit at a lower than normal position and do not resonate as they should.

The entire pitch of my voice has dropped over time, and since I run out of air before I run out of words, I drop the final words of my sentences even lower and they come out with a rattling froggy sound. This damages the cords over time, and I get additional stress because people cannot hear the final words, so they ask me to repeat, and I end up saying everything at least twice. Stressed vocal cords indeed.

Cheer up. There are some exercises that can help. It is just like when I had to have physical therapy for my legs. When you lose muscle mass and tone, you need simple exercises to build the muscle back into proper shape. So I now start my day with "eee's" and swooping "oooh's" both up and down. I consciously raise the last few words of sentences, I take breaths before I think I need to, I try to speak at a higher pitch level.

Over time, these strategies will help regain speaking ability, and as a nice bonus, my singing ability. I am glad I came. Not only to learn about my voice, but also to meet a well educated doctor whose conversations encourage me to explore a few new topics myself.