A Voice Apart

The first question you have to ask yourself is: How did I end up with such a nasty diagnosis? You may ask yourself: What have I been doing wrong with respect to my speaking or my singing voice for that matter? Analyzing the above while looking for the answer, you may remember that you have had a bad cold or virus…  At that time, your voice got quite compromised and it became raspy and hoarse. You, meanwhile, were trying to clear your throat quite hard and pushed and pulled your voice (also quite hard) to make it clearer and louder… By doing all of those things, you no doubt, have been straining your vocal cords, and therefore you have been experiencing the consequences of such actions. In the end, you ended up with pain in your throat, with an even more raspy and hoarse voice and, in some cases, even perhaps with breathing difficulties.  By the way, the latter may bring you to the next undesirable diagnosis - you may acquire asthma-like symptoms…  God forbid. Given all th...

Vocal Cord Paralysis (Paresis) is a very serious voice disorder . If there are (God Forbid) both vocal cords paralyzed, (which means there is no movement whatsoever happening between them), there is not much (if at all) that could be done to bring those vocal cords to their normal working order. The person who suffers from that horrible voice condition, practically, is mute, as he/she cannot formulate any words. It is indeed very sad! A few years ago, a handsome executive-looking Asian man walked in through my office doors. Luckily, his wife was accompanying him; as otherwise, I would not be able to understand anything what he was trying to say. She told me that her husband had an operation performed on his thyroid when he had, what doctors thought, a benign lump. After this first surgery, one of his vocal cords got paralyzed . At that time he, apparently, still could talk; however already, with great difficulty. Then, a year later, he was diagnosed...

The voice disorder such as a paralyzed vocal cord is definitely “not a picnic” to put it mildly. Usually, this condition occurs due to a related or non-related surgery. It occurs very often during the thyroid extraction or spine fusion, where the neck is involved. It actually could occur in any surgery where intubation takes place. The fact is that majority of the hospitals here in Canada and in the United States are the teaching hospitals. What that means is that these kind of procedures are not necessarily conducted by the appointed specialist(s), but are being performed by medical interns or even by medical faculty University students. Those young doctors to be are obviously still learning and do not have experience how to insert those tubes correctly. Thus, the occurred mistakes, which could cause the patient a severe damage of their vocal box, could be crucial to one’s life.   So the patient who went in to the operating room with a perfectly good voice, woke up...

Nowadays, my practice consists of at least 85-90% of nonsurgical voice repair clients. It is unfortunate, but it is a fact. One of the reasons is that people, overall, are getting to be not as healthy as they used to be. Our earth is deeply polluted and respectively, the food we eat and the air we breathe is also very toxic. A lot of voice disorder cases I am receiving are being effected environmentally, and then of course, a lot of them have been misusing their voices while speaking and, or, singing. But, first and foremost, the problem with the majority of cases begins with their inner health inadequacy. Also, a lot of those people are very intense, loud and extremely emotional. Right away, speaking loudly and forcefully, they are putting their vocal chords, and the whole vocal box in general, in great distress. They are straining their vocal chords and twisting their larynx on a consistent, everyday basis. Their posture is usually not intact a...