Why I Can’t Talk But I Can Sing

It’s been rough few weeks as speaking has quickly become so painful that I’ve had to quit talking altogether.  The weird thing is that I can still sing and connect completely through the registers. My ENT deducted that the nissen fundoplication (surgery for acid reflux that was burning my vocal cords) had failed and I would need to start from scratch and still maybe lose my voice forever.

Those of you who know me or who have read these posts know the first surgery nearly killed me, led to several other surgeries and that I have still not recovered from where this all started when I got my first diagnosis over a year ago. So when I was told I would have to start all over and might possibly lose my voice anyway, I was devastated.

So I took the next flight out to LA and moved up my appointment for a second opinion from Dr. Shawn Nasseri, the guy who trains the voice doctors at Harvard and the Mayo Clinic. Have to say, he’s the only doctor I’ve met with who’s exam room walls are covered with autographed album covers from the artists he’s helped including greats like Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder to contemporaries like every American Idol to have ever toured. But that’s not the reason I wanted to see him. I went to Dr. Nasseri because he’s the best at what he does.  I also went because all of my work is voice related and I simply can’t imagine being without my voice or the joy of singing.

Now I finally have a real diagnosis; one that made such incredible sense given my symptoms and the unanswered questions posed to my other doctors. It appears what I have is a very uncommon condition called tension muscle dysphonia.  As I understand it, during one or more of my surgeries, the muscles below my vocal cords were scraped by the breathing tubes causing some damage. The muscles reaction to that injury is to increasing seize up with use. It’s similar to a seizure that causes a persons head to pinch to the side, but instead part my throat seizes up causing great and lasting pain through the right side of my neck and head.

The great news is that Dr. Nasseri said I have a beautiful set of vocal cords, no nodes, no damage of any kind and that I will eventually get my speaking voice back. Unfortunately I’m told it will take at least six months working with a special speech pathologist to retrain the muscles to relax.  Apparently the reason I can still sing is because my technique and training have trained these muscles what to do while singing, but speaking, not so much.  Weird.  So for awhile, I’m doing as little of either as possible and visiting my pharmacy often.

What I’ve learned from this experience is that I could’ve saved my self months of emotional distress if I had just bit the bullet and gone to a pro first. Athlete’s don’t see their family physician for a sports injury so why didn’t I do the equivalent for my voice?  Money, primarily.  But it was so worth the cost to get one right answer with a plan to fix it versus the months of pain, guesses and frustration I’ve gone through.

What kind of vocal issues have you had? Click the comments button at the top of this post and leave yours. I’ll be discussing other types of vocal damage and treatment in upcoming posts.  You can help make a difference by sharing your story.

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