A Voice Apart

We all know that whichever health problems we have, the best way to conquer them is, first of all, to prevent it. However, if it already happened, the second best way to deal with it is non-surgically , if possible. The third apparent way is to embark on a surgical procedure. However, the latter is much more dangerous than the other two options. Look at the case of Julie Andrews; after undergoing a botched vocal surgery in 1997, she lost her ability to sing forever and never regained her real singing voice ever since.  Joan Rivers , not too long ago, went to a prestigious New York hospital to the outpatient ward to remove a simple polyp and, as a result, she never came out of the operation room.  And lastly, there is Sam Smith , who luckily came out of the O.R, but with no ability to speak for quite a few weeks. The rest remains to be seen. I wish him all the best and a full recovery of his vocal injury . However, with the best scenario, what is going to change afte

Should you continue singing the same way you have always been singing?  Should you ignore the unusual symptoms like hoarseness and dryness of the voice, loss of range, change of tone, etc.? These are your answers; You are a singer and have been for a long time. Your voice has never let you down for some time now, but, as musicians like to say, there is no gig lasts forever! Now you are not just getting mature, but you are also getting older and have had a lot of shows under your belt. Suddenly, you started noticing that you cannot reach the same high notes which you never had a problem with in the past, your tone of the voice is not the same and at times, you are even experiencing pitch problems, which you never had a problem with in the past. After the show, your voice and nevertheless, yourself, feeling exhausted and your voice sounds raspy and hoarse.  Those are very unfamiliar symptoms to you and now you are puzzled, concerned and even in panic. Your livelihood depen

When somebody suddenly experiences difficulties with their speaking or singing voice, they usually get really concerned, but are still hoping that the problem will go away by itself. Weeks, and sometimes months, will pass and the voice problem not only hasn’t gone away, but has actually become worse. This person ends up trying to push their voice harder and harder to make it work the way it used to, not realizing that it is doing more harm than it’s worth. Eventually, after they seem to have tried everything, they end up getting a referral to an ENT specialist, hoping that the specialist will shed light on their problem and offer them a quick and “magical” fix.  And yes, after the diagnosis, especially with polyps, nodes, nodules, or cysts, the ENT specialist usually offers a quick laser or scalpel operation to remove the growth on their vocal cords or their throats. That operation seemed to also be offered to Joan Rivers, who evidently had some problems with her voc

Let’s find out… Perhaps one day you woke up and felt that your throat is unusually dry and even somewhat scratchy. You probably did not think much about it, as it had happened before. So you started clearing your throat, trying to cough it out, but this time it was much harder to bring it to the normal state. You have tried again and again and instead of it getting better, it was getting worse. Now, probably there was a time for concern. At first, you thought that maybe you caught a cold or a virus, but you overall felt alright and not sick at all. Then you started to analyze your social behaviour and your conduct at work, trying to remember if anybody there was sick and had a virus or a cold. After that, another thought occurred in your mind and you started thinking... “Probably, I speak too much and too loud on an everyday basis, I speak on the phone all day and then go to a loud club or to my band practice…” Suddenly, you realize that you are overworking your voic

Needless to say that lately, especially since the recession kicked in, people became even more stressed out than before opposed to when they had good jobs, decent money to live on, and reasonable family lives. I always said that the voice is the spirit and it does reflect the state of the persons’ being. When the persons’ livelihood is in jeopardy and his/her world falls to pieces, it is no wonder that their spirit will be very down and, respectively, their voice will start sounding much lower in tone, much more stressed, less announced and with much less clarity. In some cases, the voice gets so laid back that it begins to gradually fall onto the lower part of the throat; and thus begins to sound very dull and somewhat hoarse .  Then the person might experience what’s called acid reflux , as the voice is drawn so low, that it evidently meets gastric acid. The person will experience the burning on the back of the vocal cords and sometimes even difficulty of breathing m