A Voice Apart

If you are suffering from a complete voice loss , then, unfortunately, we will not be able to help. In order to recover the voice, we need some kind of a sound production. I was amazed when one person, after quite intensive correspondence with me via e-mails, finally called me and could not produce anything but a whisper. When I asked him what he was diagnosed with, he, to my surprise, responded with whispers that the Doctors could not find anything wrong with him. I was literally shocked with that reply. But, unfortunately, could not offer him any viable help, as no sound was present at all. Then, in my office, another man unexpectedly walked in, who actually had the sound, but there was nothing but “mooing”, so to speak. Apparently, he recently undergone a cancer of thyroid operation and he ended up with both vocal cords paralysed . Naturally, I told him the truth that vocal paralysis on both vocal cords is non treatable.  Believe it or not, he looked at me with absolute surprise, di

Sometime ago, I received an e-mail from a, seem to be, very frustrated, aggressive and, probably, very loud in the past, woman. She was, sort of, inquiring about her damaged voice, but in the tone of her e-mail, there was a lot of anger and blame. As usual, I asked her if she wanted to speak on the phone, so I could hear her voice, first hand and then make my assumptions and outline the best course of action for her particular case to be. She agreed and I dialed the number. The minute she picked up the phone, she tried to “scream”, with her broken voice at me, blaming everybody and anybody and saying, with anger, that she could not scream anymore at her two teenage sons while they were on the field, playing soccer. Go figure! To me, even with her voice issue, she sounded very loud, rude and obnoxious, and also, interestingly enough, she, instead of wanting (for real) to fix her voice , wanted to learn a sign language…? Usually, people with a hearing impediment are using s

Let's Find Out! Lately, more and more voice problems sufferers are coming to me with the most, seem to be, common diagnoses; Such as acid reflux negatively affecting vocal cords, and also (by osmosis) affecting voice performance, which, in turn, often leads to  muscle tension dysphonia  disorder, as well as to many other kinds of voice disorders...  Are there, perhaps, any additional voice/ vocal problems that people also experience? You may ask, my reader? The answer is:  Of course, there are!  The rest of them, however, are much more tangible; Those include  nodes, nodules, polyps , lesions, cysts, etc, usually located on one or both vocal cords.  However, what appears to be interesting is that the person, let’s say with the hoarse/raspy voice, and not diagnosed with any growth on their vocal cords, is immediately labelled with one or the other diagnosis; either gastric acid reflux which is burning the sufferer’s vocal cords or muscle tension dysphonia (MTD), which

Let’s suppose you have a car, and you know how to drive it. Does it mean that you also know how to teach driving, or how to fix the car if it’s broken? The answer is - not necessarily. You could be a very good driver, but when it comes to fixing the car, you probably would need a certified/professional car mechanic who specializes in technical issues of the matter.  In fact, when my child reached 16, she asked me to teach her how to drive, and pointed out that a lot of parents do exactly that. My response to her was; “My dear daughter, I definitely know how to drive, but you will not pay me a million dollars to teach you how to drive. I will leave it to a professional who would make sure that you will go on the road, won’t kill anybody and, yourself, come back in one piece. Similarly, when somebody claims to be a vocal coach, it should not be assumed that this person also knows how to fix the voice issue/problem, if such occurs. However, I have recei