Photos!

Ok, if I were more organized and a seasoned blogger, I would have posted pictures throughout this entire journey, but alas, I kept forgetting. I did take pictures though so here they are:

No, this is not a vagina. Don't get excited. This is a photo of my vocal cyst. You're looking down my throat and the lump on the right side of the photo is actually on my left vocal chord. It's supposed to be straight on both sides. My left chord has the cyst, and the right isn't straight due to irritation. 

Ok, this is a photo of my chords on my June 18th appointment when the doctors were concerned that I wasn't healing quickly enough. You can see the edges are still a bit lumpy...  They were more concerned about it being pink, but maybe it's easier to see that at another angle. I took pics at each appointment, but accidentally erased most of them so sorry for the leap forward.

This is the latest scoped image that they took on August 2nd. They were much happier with this than any of the other photos so, I guess it looks good! To be honest I can't really tell a difference haha. Of course they watch it as a video and here I'm only showing still images. The white stuff is mucus. I know. Gross. 

Anyway, you can see that it's still not perfect, but the edges will continue to heal throughout the next year and get more smooth. Kinda neat, huh? And nasty. It's embarrassing when unsuspecting people look through the pictures on my computer :)

Better?

Okay, so I neglected this for a while, but I admit I was avoiding writing another blog until I knew what was going on. The last blog that I wrote was in April. I was talking about my experience with strep throat, and admitting that I wouldn’t be able to get back to work very soon. Now, it’s been four months, and a lot has happened. I’ll break it up into two parts: “Better!” and “...maybe not.”

Better:

So, come June, I was feeling great. I had been seeing a woman once a week in Seattle for vocal rehab all throughout May, and she had me working on things like vocal warm-ups and holding out long notes, to rebuild my voice stamina. My progress was a bit inconsistent, but always heading in the right direction. My doctor had given me permission to do small shows here and there as long as the rehab coach said I was ready, so once my voice was feeling stable, I tried it out. I even contacted my old band to make a video demo to get back on ships, and had a meeting with the guy who I was hoping would hire me. Finally, I started singing again. In the car to the radio (which I couldn’t do FOREVER) and with my friends, and finally, at my own show. 

A local coffee shop called “Java” likes to have live music and they all know me over there, and were super accommodating to my easing into singing. The first show that I played was only 2 hours long, but everything felt perfect. I could belt with no strain and do everything! It took me a bit to get used to singing into a mic again, because I had gotten into the habit of touching the mic with my lips when I sing, and letting the mic do the work when I was unwell. It’s actually much healthier to sing with more air and volume, away from the mic, and my volume intimidated me initially, until I got used to it again. Feeling great after that show, I decided to do it again!

The coffee shop asked me back to sing for an event called “Car d’Alene”, a play on words of my town’s name, “Coeur d’Alene”. Anyway, point is, it was loud. Huge crowds of people out to see a parade of old school cars revving their engines right outside. It was fun! But... loud. I tried not to talk between songs unless I was in the mic, but it was still a bit more than I should have done. Plus, I did three hours this time. Singing was no problem. I felt a bit strained while talking, and a little fatigue near the end of my last set, but it wasn’t difficult to stay on key or anything. The next day my voice was a bit sore and hoarse, but it just reminded me to ease into things a little slower. 

That was a Friday, and by the time I got to my June appointment in Seattle the next Monday, my throat was still tired. I made excuses like the dry air on the plane, and not remembering to grab a water bottle at the airport etc.. I also mentioned that I’d overdone it a bit at my show, but otherwise was hoping to be released for work. Well, not just hoping, I was confident about my progress... needless to say, it didn’t go as well as I’d planned.

....Maybe not:

So after scoping me, the doctor and vocal pathologist looked nervous. They told me that   it was pink (my cyst removal site) when it shouldn’t be anymore. He thought that maybe my recovery was delayed due to my strep throat episode, and told me that I wasn’t ready at all to be released for work. He wanted to see me again in 3 months and told me to take it easy again. I argued that my voice was just tired from my show and that really, I’m actually better! I had a show scheduled for later that week and I knew I could do it! Then I cried. Haha. Poor doctors having to deal with my emotions... Dr.Merati was very sweet and understanding, handing me a tissue and changing plans. He said, “Okay I have an idea. Maybe you’re right and I’m not. You know your body better than I do. How about this... you go do your show, see how you feel. In a week or two give me a call. Maybe you’ll feel great and this is just a little fluke, ok? If so, I’ll have you come back in right away and check it out. If not, we’ll think of scheduling something later on.”

That made me feel a little better and I left in a super depressed mood, but still hoping for a quick recovery.

I did a little 2 hour show of soft songs later that week, and realized that Dr.Merati was right. Something was wrong. Crap. I e-mailed him and Ginger, the vocal pathologist and asked what to do. We scheduled an appointment in August and they told me to cross my fingers and toes. Ginger gave me permission to sing at a wedding at the end of July, but told me not to talk at the reception because it would be loud. In all other situations she said to only speak when I absolutely have to. Sooo back to square one. I had been soooo excited to be free again to speak and sing, and here I was caged up again. I had so much anxiety over it, that I didn’t know what to do.

Something else that I was worried about was getting well before I move. It would take a few more months, at least, before I could get approval to work, then a few more to fill a job opening, so I decided to do something else. Move to Argentina. Sounds random, but I had planned on this before, thinking I’d save up money from ships and then go. Now that my options were stay poor at my parents house in Idaho for six more months, or go be poor in Argentina for six months, I chose the latter. Soooo I was stressing over my sore voice, knowing I wouldn’t be able to see the doctor once I left. Was I making the right choice?

My voice sort of planed out over the next month. It was constantly sore and I was always trying to massage my throat and be extra careful to speak properly when I did speak. I made rules where I just plain didn’t speak at all in the mornings, and often times would go on vocal rest while hanging out with friends, or when family was visiting, I’d go sit inside rather than be out socializing with the company. At the wedding, I was extra careful, and as always, awkward because I would just stand around smiling like an idiot instead of contributing to the convo. Finally, the dreaded doctors appointment arrived, and I was prepared for the worst. 

Sitting in the patient room, Ginger came in to have a chat before Dr.Merati scoped me. I explained to her in detail the pain. How my throat was always feeling so tight, and hurting, and suuuper tired. How I always had to massage it and how it felt impossible to speak without glottal attacks (the harsh sound, normally at the beginning of a vowel). She made me stop speaking properly, and told me to start over and just speak how I would if I were being lazy. It was difficult to allow myself to do that after being careful for so long, but when I did, she said that my natural, what I considered to be “unhealthy” voice, was better that my “healthy” voice. She concluded that I was probably over guarding my throat. Being so careful not to hurt it after my last appointment, apparently I had been tightening up the muscles in my throat and holding my stress in those muscles. I wasn’t breathing out when speaking due to all of my stress and it was making my voice fatigued. 

Sure enough, when the doctor scoped me, they told me that it was looking better than ever. The flesh was nice and pale, and everything was right on track! Holy... relief. Oh my gosh, so funny because I was thinking, “How could I be getting worse? I’m the perfect patient! I do everything right!” Well, turns out I was trying too hard. Hah! Of course. Soooo now, it’s been a week since my appointment, and I’m doing better. I was doing MUCH better, but then I think I overdid it haha. It’s going to be a matter of finding the balance between relaxing, and relaxing too much. 

I sang at an open jam, made some new friends and sang some more at a party. I sang at a wedding and now feel more light hearted after my last appointment. I’ll move to Argentina and see Dr.Merati when I get back in six months! He gave me the info of a doctor he knows there just in case, but doesn’t think I’ll need it. Still on my way, but definitely had a reminder that there isn’t a textbook recovery time. Life has it’s way of keeping me on my toes, and right now, I’m going to take it as a good thing. 

Reality

11 months. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve really been able to sing. My surgery was in January, and it’s now April. Although my doctor had said I would probably not be able to gig for 6 months after the surgery, I was going for 3. He said it’s possible, but not probable and I was out to prove that I could do it. I was a perfect angel throughout my pre surgery, post surgery, vocal therapy, and on the side. As it turns out, there’s more to a perfect recovery than perfect behavior.

By March, I could tell things were going to be more slow moving then I had hoped. Although I was doing everything right, it was still taking forever! I wanted to be singing by the end of March. I didn’t necessarily expect to be able to sing 4 hours a day (which is what’s expected for a solo act) but I thought a couple hours a few times a week at least. I was home doing the vocal warm-ups and exercises that had been given to me by the vocal coach in Seattle, and I officially graduated from vocal therapy! Every day I was doing these strengthening exercises but was surprised at how easily my throat was still tiring. I had hoped this process would go faster, but it was becoming painfully obvious that I had a long way to go. 

I did get to sing a little tiny bit. My vocal coach had said not to sing for more than 15 minutes at a time and to do very light singing if I did. That was going well and I actually recorded a little video to cheer my friend up. It wasn’t great, but it was a soft easy song. If you care to hear it, this is the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBbSW9N7alk You can also hear how my speaking voice is in the beginning of the video. I find it annoying, but after 10 months of vocal therapy, that turns out to be my healthy voice so I need to get used to it. 

Soon after I recorded that video, I was waking up in the morning with vocal fatigue. Initially I thought I’d overdone it. Finally I was healthy enough to go out dancing and do a little drinking with my friends, and since it had been months and months since I’d been able to indulge, I took advantage of it. I still didn’t allow myself to speak in the bars, so the vocal fatigue was confusing me. Had I spoken without realizing it? Was my lip-syncing to the songs working the muscles too much? What had I done? Even though I had a few drinks, I always made sure to make drinking water a priority. Was I talking too much throughout the day with my friends? The confusion over my vocal pain gave me serious anxiety and I didn’t have my vocal therapist anymore to ask questions. I was supposed to be seeing the vocal coach in Seattle, but there was confusion on the insurance side of things and they were taking forever to figure it out. In the mean time, I was home with throat pain and nobody to comfort me about it or suggest solutions. It wasn’t long though, before the mystery was solved.

I had only been healthy enough to go out 2 weekends in a row. After the second weekend, my best friend Erin called me up with an urgent message. She told me to get the the doctor quick. We had been sharing drinks on and off over the last two weeks, and she was coming home from the doctor. Bronchitis. Knowing how important it is for my vocal chords not to cough, she wanted me to see the doctor as soon as possible to catch it early. I took her advice and rushed over to the urgent care. They did a few tests on me, and when the doctor came back in to discuss things with me, I apologized. I told him that I’ve never gone to the doctor feeling so healthy before, but I just wanted to be safe. He said that it’s lucky I came in, because my strep test came back positive. What?? Okay.... I’m a chronic strep throat girl, or, I was. As a kid it hurt but not too terribly, but in High School, I had it soooo badly that I was rushed to the hospital a few times, and I even had an IV in my hand at all times so that I could go to the doctor and have them hydrate me intravenously. I couldn’t eat or drink anything and I lost so much weight my pants were falling off. The worst part was the last day of every round of antibiotics, the infection would come back WAY worse than it was before. I think I had it four straight times before they finally took my tonsils out. After that, I never had strep throat again. You might imagine my surprise when I was expecting a bronchitis diagnosis and got a strep one instead with very little comparative pain. Thinking that I caught it early, I thanked my lucky stars and got antibiotics right away.

I wrote my doctor and vocal coach and asked what to do. They told me not to worry and that I’ll be better soon, but in the mean time I had to go on vocal rest until my symptoms were gone. Doh! Not again! Oh well. Small price I suppose. The only problem with that was that I didn’t really have symptoms! My throat was a bit sore and when I tried working out I got tired way sooner than usual, but other than that I felt better than ever. I decided to go on vocal rest until my throat wasn’t sore upon waking up in the morning which was about 3 days into my 10 days of antibiotics. Still, I kept talking to a minimum at first and didn’t do my strengthening exercises or singing. The second to last day of my treatment, I was feeling great so I did my warm-ups, and even a tiny bit of singing while I practiced guitar. That night, I wished I hadn’t. Again, I thought I overdid it. My throat almost felt swollen as I went to bed. When I woke up the next morning, I knew something was wrong.

History does repeat itself. On the last day of my antibiotics, I woke up with what felt like marbles in my throat. I knew from experience that my strep was back with a vengeance, worse than before.  Going straight to the urgent care, I found that my suspicions were correct. Positive for strep. While after my first visit I was excited to have caught it early, after this visit I felt a sense of dread. Now, instead of a few days lost in my progress, it’s going to be 20 days. I was given another 10 days worth of meds but the doctor didn’t seem confident that it would work. If my strep doesn’t go away this time... then what? They can’t take my tonsils out again! 

This is where I stand right now. I’m halfway through my meds, and my throat still hurts a little. I’ve wasted a month of progress and possibly even lost the progress I had made, taking me back to the beginning. I suppose this stands as a good reminder. My thought this whole time was that when I’m recovered from surgery, I’ll be able to sing every day again with no problems. It never occurs to me to factor in illness. Even when my throat is better and there’s no sign of the cyst, I need to remember that I’m not a machine. Some things are simply out of my control and the sooner I realize this, the better. As the month of April continues to pass me by one fast day at a time, I have to remind myself that working by April was an optimistic goal of mine. In the beginning I had said that I would like to be working by the end of March or April, but I’d understand if I wasn’t ready. It’s difficult to admit defeat and to realize that I’ll be jobless for a few more months than I had planned, but I suppose what matters is that one day I’ll be better. Even if that day isn’t here right now. 

Slow Motion

I feel like my life is in slow motion. Like I’m watching my life as a movie, but I’m not actually part of it. There’s a lot of action going on, but I’m watching in slow motion. I know something’s happening, but it’s making me extremely restless and frustrated. Its like the remote doesn’t work so even though I want to put everything back to normal time, I’m forced to watch in in very slow, boringly predictable increments. 

I may have mentioned before that when I was living in Las Vegas I made the connection between singing and my mood. The first couple months that I lived in Las Vegas, my throat wasn’t used to the dry hot air of the desert and so until I was acclimated, I couldn’t really sing. It’s sort of the way that chronic pain tricks people into being in a bad mood. Or lack of sleep. Or hunger. Okay, hopefully you get my point... initially it takes a while to figure out why we’re in a bad mood. Sometimes, it never even occurs to us to try to figure it out because we’re so sure that our mood is justified that it’s not until later that we realize we were being an unreasonable ass. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I was being stressed out and grumpy until one day when my voice felt good. I sang and played guitar all day and only then, by the contrast of my good mood, did I realize how bad it had gotten. From then on, any time I found my mood falling, I saw that it was in direct correlation with how my voice was doing. It’s not rocket science, but it’s been helpful to me. We all have those friends who get grumpy until they eat something... I’m grumpy until I sing. Weird, but true. 

This need to sing is probably the reason that you hear so many musicians saying “music is my life!” I could never really explain to people who aren’t musical what it means to be so passionate about something like this, but now I think I’m getting closer. Think of each of us as a computer. (Maybe this is a bad example cause I don’t really know a ton about computers, but work with me here...) Okay so we’ve got the main hard drive. That’s like, our breathing, heartbeat, and our senses. Then we have add-ons and downloads which would be our hobbies. So, that’s where art, music, and sports, etc. come in and make us individuals. Way more basic then it could be, but the point is, I think that some of us have the hobbies built directly into our core processor (computer people... does that make sense?). It’s not an add-on, it’s at the heart of us the same way that breathing or thinking is. For some it’s music, some it’s sports, for some it’s business... It’s the only way that I can think to explain people who are intensely passionate about something. It’s at the core of our being and we’d have a hard time living without it. 

This may all seem like gibberish (okay... it kind of is. Sorry.) but there is a point behind it all. I am one of those people who has to sing. I don’t even notice when I’m singing. I’m like that crazy lady who sings and hums under my breath in a crowded elevator or in line at the buffet. The socially adequate part of my brain (i.e. my sister’s scolding look etched in my mind) reminds me that these things are considered strange and awkward, but I honestly don’t know I’m doing it. I’ll catch myself and stop, and then as soon as I move on, I do it again. 

Things changed in May of 2011 when I hurt my throat. I was told not to sing or hum or my throat would never get better. That’s the ONLY motivator that I could have that would possibly work. I’ve been a perfect angel. Today it’s been exactly two months since I had surgery in January, and TEN months since I had to stop singing. Oh my gosh... didn’t realize it until I wrote it just now. Crazy. Only now am I really starting to miss my singing at a level that I actually feel is effecting my health in a negative way. It feels as though I’ve been depriving myself of my music vitamin and throughout the months it’s been slowly leaching out of my bones. Now, I’m almost out of my reserves and I’m getting desperate. Although my surgery was 2 months ago, my recovery is going to be a long one. Dr.Merati said it takes about 6 months after surgery before my vocal chords will be ready to play gigs again. I’m shooting for 3 months but suddenly it feels like that goal is rapidly approaching and I’m not ready yet. Now that I mentioned I was a perfect angel, I have to be honest...

Okay. So I was perfect for a while, but now it’s getting hard. I’m well enough to speak again. My voice rarely gets tired and I even have held conversations in loud places (not a good idea but oh well...) without tiring out my voice. So there are some very obvious exciting improvements. At my one month appointment the doctor told me my throat looked as good as someone who’d been healing for 2-3 months so I was really excited. He told me I still wasn’t allowed to sing, and I truly had all intentions of following his instructions. One day I was home alone (that never happens.) and I had this crazy natural reaction so start singing. Now... let me back track. I’d not been listening to certain music that I love singing like, Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey, Adele, etc., because I know I have absolutely no control over myself and can’t help singing along. I also deprived myself of musical environments like open jam nights, karaoke bars, and even friends who might encourage me to sing. Those sacrifices have been in place for months. So on this day, for once I trusted myself and put my itunes on random. Eventually a random Celine Dion karaoke track that I had on my computer started playing and I swear... even if I had a gun to my head and was told not to sing, I don’t know if I could have resisted. Celine Dion. Really? It’s not even like I went for a chill Norah Jones song. I busted that song out like I’ve never sang before. Initially some of the notes were a bit shaky due to my weak throat, but by the end I was belting the high notes better than I had before surgery. Then, I couldn’t stop singing. 

It’s like crying. Or laughing. A cathartic release that you don’t really have control over. It may sound strange that singing can be just as hard to stop doing as crying, but it makes sense. It’s even just as easy to start, hence depriving myself of musical environments. I finally realized that the reason I’ve been shit at practicing guitar, is because it’s a gateway to singing... just the way a sad movie is to someone trying not to cry. Singing has always been the way that I de-stress and let everything out. It makes me feel way better about myself than chocolate can (pretty much the closest mood enhancer that I found to singing hahaha), and it was well overdue. I was freaking out with guilt inside, but once I opened the floodgate, it was almost impossible to stop singing. Almost like, I had closed a door for a long time, then I opened it and let a little singing out, but then left the door wide open and told the rest of the singing not to leave. It kept trickling out. Okay, it’s kinda like only peeing a little. Sorry. Had to go there. It’s the best example I’ve got. We all know how hard that is. These are all just complicated ways for me to be delivering my excuses. I sang when I wasn’t supposed to. Afterwards, I felt like a woman on a strict diet who suddenly binged and ate and entire cake as quickly as possible. I couldn’t undo what I’d done, but I was really nervous that I pushed too far. The next day my throat was very weak and tired and I suffered from anxiety until a day later when I saw my vocal therapist. She reassured me that I didn’t undo my progress but told me not to do it again. 

It’s getting more and more difficult for me to spend my time doing lip trills and hissing noise, working on reducing glottal attacks while speaking, and using frontal focus. (Will write a more technical blog explaining all of this later).Yes. Good. I know it’s what I have to do in order to make it to a full recovery but I just. want. to. sing. Now where’s that god damn remote. 

Social Life

Social encounters are impossible to avoid. Even if I lock myself in my parent’s house like a hermit and avoid any contact with the outside world, my parents will still talk to me. It’s inevitable. Also, adding 10 minutes of speaking a day is important because I’m supposed to be restoring my vocal chords to their natural vibrations. If I chose just to keep silent, I wouldn’t be recovering. The point is that I do have to talk. The reason I bring up the social aspect is because it makes it way more complicated. When I was on total vocal rest, people understood. Easy. They didn’t expect me to respond to them vocally (well... unless they were clueless), and waited for me to write to them on my whiteboard. Now that I’m allowed to speak a little, everyone seems to think I’m cured. As a general rule, people don’t easily accept that I can be speaking to them one moment and then not the next. It comes across as rude or “Well... what’s the big deal in answering me? You were just talking!” It’s difficult enough for me to know when to stop talking. I have to count the hm’s and ha’s and it’s hard to know sometimes what it’s added up to. So when I’m around people who don’t understand, it makes it even more difficult. You follow? Sigh. Complicated. 

Something else that I feel I should mention under this social subject, is my paranoia over possible injury and how that effects the way I respond to others. I find myself constantly annoyed with people. When men take me on dates to places that are loud then try to hold a conversation with me, I’m pretty close to livid. Maybe this makes me a diva, but it’s not like my voice problem is a secret to them... they just decide it’s not very important to worry about. Or when I say I won’t be able to talk to them at a hockey game and they say “you could just do some warm-ups before we get in and you’ll be good to go.” No. Arrogant ass. I will NOT be good to go ruining my voice on your self-absorbed company, thank you. I found that my mother says “huh?” or “what?” just about every time I speak. It also occurred to me that she doesn’t have a hearing problem, it’s a listening problem. If I choose not to repeat myself and just wait it out, it turns out that she actually knows what I said and will answer. Can’t believe I didn’t discover this sooner! Hahaha. Repeating myself is NOT something I will happily do lately. I keep finding myself in what would be super normal situations, but I’m the only one who understands how important my health is and it quickly ruins the fun. When my friends try to get me to smoke with them, for instance, I have to wonder what their motive is. Any good friend would say “Keep away! We’re going to be smoking and you have to take care of your voice!” Hahaha. Yeah right. I’ll admit that none of this is new to me. It reminds me of working on cruise ships. 

Over and over again on ships I was forced to see that my best interests are not something people usually care about. I had to sing 4 hours a day 7 days a week so even BEFORE I injured my voice, my vocal health was my number one priority. It’s funny that of all the singers I knew who would get drunk, scream, and smoke while belting out crew karaoke, I was the one who ended up with throat issues. I was so careful on ships compared to anyone I know. It was frustrating that my friends didn’t care about me protecting my throat. Every night I’d be teased for buying water and people would refuse to accept that I wasn’t drinking alcohol. They would buy me a drink and I’d make them angry by turning it down when it was already paid for. Always, people would try to hold loud conversations or get me to sing along with the bar songs for some reason. They’d drunkenly say, “You’re a singer! Can you sing this? Sing this! Come on! Why aren’t you singing?? I know you can! Sing it!”. It has always frustrated the hell out of me that nobody knows how important it is to me to keep healthy and take care of my voice. A true friend would pat me on the back and tell me how proud they were that I was able to keep my priorities straight, right? Those people rarely surfaced. It felt kinda like I was a known alcoholic and everyone was teasing me for not drinking... or a kid with an obesity problem and everyone was shoving cake in my face. Smoking, drinking, loud talking, and extra singing were all things that were bad for my voice, but that’s all people seemed to want from me. I’m lucky in a way that I had the opportunity to learn early on that most people who appear to give a crap about you, actually don’t. If I were able to do all of these socially normal things, I never would have realized who really cares about me and who doesn’t. 

I’m going to say right now that I recognize that it’s not all out of selfish behavior that my friends act this way. Sometimes it just comes down to being ignorant on the subject. What’s obvious common sense to me, just isn’t to some others. I don’t hold anything against people who don’t understand, I just choose when, and when not to, hang around them. It also really makes me appreciate the few and far between who are willing to listen and learn. I’ve accepted the fact that my career means more to me than my social life and I only hope that one day I’ll have enough friends in my life who understand me so that I can have both :) Oh... or that I develop vocal chords of steal and can REALLY have it all... well, lets go one goal at a time haha. 

The Waiting Game

Oh the wait. The tedious, careful wait. This part has been challenging so far. My doctor had warned me that after a good post-op appointment, patients tend to overdue it. Being the perfect angel that I am, I thought that armed with this information, avoiding poor behavior would be easy. Of course, I discovered that nothing’s ever black and white, and that this turned out to be much more difficult than I predicted. As a review, I’m going to remind everyone what I was told to do after my last appointment on the 19th of January. I’m to add 10 minutes of talking each day, but I can only speak up to 10 minutes at a time... so even if I’m up to 2 hours a day, keep the talking to 10 minutes. Next, I was told to do nothing that would make me breathe hard or grunt. Hm. So... no snowboarding. The other requirements are the obvious “don’t speak over loud noises or yell across the house” etc. Easy, right? Well... let me explain where I’ve run into problems...

First of all, none of this is good for the social life. I’ll go into that more in my next blog because that’s a whole story on it’s own, but the fact is that my voice recovery will be lasting much longer than people realize. They see me and hear me speaking, and think I can go back to doing everything normal. People are offended if I don’t respond verbally to them, and they call to me from another room as if expecting me to yell back. 

Another problem is how much better I feel! After a couple weeks of being allowed to speak, I felt so much better that I thought the wound must have healed, and now I was working on building up the muscle. While I still avoided activities like snowboarding, (believing the cold air still wouldn’t be good for me), I had begun doing a low cardio workout everyday. Sitting on the couch so much during recovery was starting to make me crazy so I just did a light one hour workout every day. When I started vocal therapy back up a couple days ago, she informed me that my wound was still healing and that any hard breathing could potentially cause my throat to heal abnormally or cause a hemorrhage, and scar tissue. This was mortifying to me because here I promised to be a perfect patient, and I didn’t even realize I’d been risking hurting my throat! It was a nice wakeup call. She told me to at least wait another week (when I have my second post-op) to do anything active. 

I’m finding that a good recovery isn’t always about people being good patients or not. I thought that since it means so much to me, I would be perfect, but I allowed my senses to trick me. Just because it’s been forever and I feel really well, doesn’t actually mean I am well. It’s important to remain excited to get better, but not TOO excited! Now I’m cutting back and taking it easy again. This poor couch is now shaped perfectly to my body, but if that’s what it takes to sing again, call me an Idaho couch potato. 

Boredom

Can I just say something about the boredom? I know, I know. You’re never supposed to admit it when you’re bored. My Dad used to say, “You’re bored? Good. Clean something.” It’s true. There is no reason to ever be bored. That being said, I’m bored as HELL. I’m sorry! I’m at a point in my life where the things that I do now don’t matter. They’ll matter later, but not yet. Let me explain.

I’ve experienced this feeling before. It’s a feeling of total pointlessness. Is that a word? Anyway, I feel like a parasite right now. I’m not working. Thankfully I’m receiving a small amount of money per month from the cruise line in a Maritime version of workers comp, but it’s not enough to do anything accept for buy groceries... kinda. I’m vegan and generally eat everything organic so my groceries are more expensive than average. That’s kind of a good thing at the moment because it means I buy less (and eat less) than usual which helps compensate for how much I’m sitting around. People often say “Oh my God... you’ve been out of work since May??? What have you been doing?” The answer isn’t very interesting, but I’ll tell you anyway.

To start off, let me give you a timeline. My last contract on a ship ended in May. I was offered another contract that was to start up a couple days later which fit my plans perfectly. I’d saved up a lot of money, but not as much as I needed for a trip that I planned. I was going to go to Europe and visit my friends in all of their different countries. Holland is a place I was generally focused on after having met so many people that reside there and I wanted one more quick contract to squeeze in so that I could go during the summer. It was hard, but I had to decline. Something was wrong. I knew that I had to see a doctor. It took a month before I could get in to see a specialist in Idaho and another month after that to see the vocal therapist. I had been told that I had developed vocal nodes and that it would take about 2 months of vocal therapy twice a week to fix it. Two months?? Oh no! That was the worst news that I could imagine. I had the dreaded nodes. My plans for Europe were ruined but my voice was more important. At my two month appointment, my therapist and doctor were both confident that my nodes were gone... until he scoped me and determined they hadn’t even shrunk. What??? Oh my gosh. How long was this going to take? I’d looked into working as a librarian on a ship in the mean time, but I was told that until the doctor gave me the all clear, I wasn’t allowed to work at all. A month later, they were again, sure that I was better. It was hard to tell if my voice was tired because something was still wrong, or merely because I went from singing 4 hours a day, to not singing at all. Again, no progress. This happened twice more during which time my vocal therapist assumed I wasn’t doing my therapy and where my doctor determined that I may never get better so I “May as well go back to work and see how it goes”. WHAT? I sing for a living. I can’t go back to work yet. I reminded him of this and he suggested that I still go and try to see doctors when I’m in port. I asked if he could just refer me to another specialist now. In November I was finally sent to Seattle where I was informed that I’d been misdiagnosed and I had to have surgery to remove a cyst. All of my savings were gone by now due to fact that I thought I was going to be out of work for 2 months tops. My surgery was scheduled for January which was the soonest they could see me, and now here I am a couple weeks later. 

Sorry for that long, elaborated timeline haha. I felt that it was important to express that the doctors kept telling me “next month you can go back to work” because this is the main reason I didn’t search for a side job at home. Also I might have lost my workers comp which was paying for my surgery. I couldn’t talk either which I suppose is kind of inconvenient. So what’s a girl to do when she’s trapped in Idaho with no job, no money, no voice, and messed up joints? Yeah my joints are messed up to. Can’t catch a break, can I? Well... during the summer and fall I was able to be a bit more productive. I had more money because I hadn’t used up my savings yet, and I had a car to drive because my Dad was driving his sports car and hadn’t put it away for the winter yet. I donated my time at a local soup kitchen and participated in a volunteer group of students from the college, helping with Special Olympics. I started taking piano and guitar lessons every week to attempt to improve my music theory. Another thing I was focusing on was my other health problems, seeing an acupuncturist once a week, and later a chiropractor in an attempt to tackle the health issues that I was too busy to address at sea. I was reading my Spanish Harry Potter books, painting, and learning how to use Logic Pro (music software).  For the most part I felt like I was keeping busy and productive, but knew that it was only temporary and I’d be back to work soon. 

By the time winter hit, things went downhill. Before my Seattle appointment, I told myself there’s no way I’d stay in Idaho for the winter. Me, my sinuses, and my joints, HATE being cold. I would no longer have a car. I had just run out of my savings and was having to live off of the small amount of workers comp money, which just wasn’t enough. I had to quit my piano and guitar lessons, and stop seeing my doctors. Since I didn’t have a car, I could no longer commit myself to my volunteer work. I had to get out of here. My thought was simple. I had two options. A: the Seattle doctor would say I’m better (because... again, that’s what my VT and Idaho doctor thought) or B: he’d say to keep doing my therapy. My Idaho doctor had told me those were my only two options and there was really no point going to Seattle, but he still sent me. My plan, therefore, was that if he said I’m better, I’d get some vocal coaching for a month to rebuild my vocal muscles then get back out to sea. If he said I wasn’t better yet, I’d abandon my workers comp, and get onto a ship as a Youth Staff or Librarian and continue to do my therapy on my own. Either way I was set to leave. No longer would I have to attempt to delude myself into thinking I was being a productive citizen. Then I got the news that I wasn’t prepared for. I had to have surgery. I had to stay. 

This was the worst point for me. Aside from being terrified of the potential ramifications of the surgery, this was crushing news. I was trapped. Literally. Because of my joint issues I couldn’t even leave the house on a bike if I wanted to. There’s no public transportation in my town (unless I walked forever to find a shuttle stop which I can’t do...) and most of my friends were either not in Idaho, or very busy with their lives and I couldn’t expect them to cart me around. At this point, it turned out to be a good thing that I couldn’t afford to do my usual activities. I wouldn’t be able to get there even if I could afford it. As an adult woman, my life was as shameful as I could imagine it to be. I went from living on ships making money and being independent, to living with my parents and asking them for rides. I was more independent in High School. Making new friends wasn’t something I was really interested in. What was I going to do. Ask them to come chill at my Mom’s house? Ew. Luckily I had a few good friends in town who could keep me company sometimes and didn’t care where I lived or that my life was boring. That helped a lot. With effort I may have been able to continue to do some of my volunteering but I lost interest. I stopped practicing guitar and piano. I didn’t have motivation to practice my Spanish. Plus, I was sick and I’d been sick since Thanksgiving with a cold and cough that wouldn’t go away. Finally, I was just at the point where I felt sorry for myself. My family and I  weren’t really getting along and the fact that I couldn’t just leave and get a moment to myself made me crazy. 

I don’t like to ask my parents for anything. I’m already a leach that lives in their house and runs up the heating and electricity bills. When Christmas was approaching, however, I needed some tests done by the doctor that insurance didn’t cover and I couldn’t afford. I asked my mother if she could cover the cost of the tests for Christmas and she refused because it wasn’t a nice present. (I still haven’t had the tests...). She told me to think of something else, and so I asked for the thing that I wanted the most. A ticket out of here. I’d already looked at tickets to LA and found some that were cheap and she agreed that I could go. Yes! A long needed vacation. Although I have family in California, they’re busy with their lives and I knew if I went to visit them I’d just be stuck at their house, so I went to see my friend Whitney. It was so nice to have a social life for a week! She kept me busy and we had a lot of fun. During that trip I almost got better from my cold, but as usual, it came back full force. This meant that when I got back to Idaho, I still couldn’t go out drinking and dancing with my friends. Salt in the wound. 

The relaxation from my trip only lasted a few days and then I went back to being a nervous wreck. My days consisted of Facebook (not proud.), reading, painting, crocheting random hats and headbands for people, and trying to suppress my coughing so as not to do further damage to my throat. Another thing that I was still doing was working with Logic Pro. I was taking songs that I’ve written but haven’t had a chance to record yet, and doing all of the music for it. That way, when I can sing again, it’ll be like singing karaoke to tracks that are all finished. My motivation with that was here and there because sometimes my inability to sing would overwhelm me with frustration and the creative juices would just stop. 

The turn around happened when I had my surgery. I’ve explained already that I was relieved when my surgery went well. Understatement of the century. I hadn’t realized how much better my mind would feel after the surgery. Now, I’m in the same dilemma as before. I sit around a lot, get trapped at home all the time, freeze my ass off, feel sometimes like there’s no point trying to get anything done, but somehow it’s not as bad. Those things combined with the fear of a botched surgery was much more overwhelming then what I face now. I’m frustrated at how long my doctor said it’ll be to get well again, but at least this time I’m on the mend and I’ll be able to see progress. Now I can start to plan for my future with more confidence and there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel. Like I said. I’ve been here before. During that time people thought I was wasting my time practicing guitar and learning songs, but it payed off in the future with a solo act on cruise ships that took me around the world. Hopefully I’ll find that the mundane seemingly pointless things I’ve been doing for the past 9 months will enrich my life in ways that I never could have predicted. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. 

Cracking

I don’t know why I called this one Cracking. I suppose it’s referring to the way I sound right now. I don’t want to forget that this blog is also meant to be informative as well as entertaining :). So far I haven’t really gotten into the physical effects of the surgery yet. If you are reading this because you are about to face the same thing, or just because you’re curious, I hope you find it interesting either way.

Let me back track a moment. I’d like to get into what I felt like directly after the surgery and all the way up until today when I had my first post-op appointment. I mentioned already, the way I felt upon awakening from surgery... the coughing and feeling guilty for coughing etc. Now I’m going to explain how it was from that day on. As I mentioned before, my tongue was numb after the surgery. Eating was a big pain because it was annoying, but it actually was easier than expected. I wasn’t sure how difficult eating would be after throat surgery, but the operation was in my wind pipe, so it’s not like having tonsils removed (Really painful by the way, if you haven’t tried that. That surgery hurt WAY more!), the pain is down the other tube... and there was minimal pain. I ate apple sauce, soup, and a shake the first day, and was pretty much back to normal the next. I would say two things bothered me a lot more than my throat. My jaw hurt like a bitch. I wanted to put bitch in caps lock, but I’m trying to keep it a bit classy, hahaha. The point is, they cranked the crap out of my jaw to hold my mouth open. I’m glad of course that they were able to see well and do a good job on the surgery, but my poor jaw did NOT appreciate it. The other thing that was bothering me was my numb tongue. I don’t mean it was numb so I couldn’t feel it. I mean, it was numb so I could only kind of feel it and it hurt all the way down my throat. Luckily during the time that it was the most painful, I had drugs :) After a couple days I switched to tylenol and hardly needed it. 

After a week my tongue was still numb. In fact, it’s been a week and a half and it’s still a bit numb today. It was annoying to me that whistling was hard with my numb tongue, because I already can’t sing or hum. No whistling either?? It’s in my nature to always be singing or humming a tune so it made me crazy that I could’t even just whistle. I feel sorry for those of you who don’t know how to whistle! Hahaha I didn’t realize how frustrating it can be. That was also one of the only ways that I could communicate with my sister’s dog, Gunner. Trying to call him into the house without being able to use my voice or whistle was pretty much impossible. Damn dog :). From the day of surgery on, I had to do a very soft hum out of my nose and a sniff in for about 30 seconds every hour, just to get things moving.

So anyway, a week after surgery I was able to speak for ten minutes, and then add ten minutes a day from that point on. The first day that I was allowed to talk, I was kinda terrified... The warm fuzzy feeling that I had after hearing that the surgery went well, was replaced with the fear that once I started speaking, they might change their mind. What if they thought it went well, and then when I try to talk, something’s wrong? I spoke very quietly that day. It sounded like the voice of a little kid and was very weak and shaky. For the first time in my life since I can remember, I didn’t have control of my voice. I had it down to such an art that I was able to sing around my cyst. I could feel where the unnatural break was in my voice, and use another way to hit the notes smoothly. Of course this made my voice more tired, but at least I had control. It was finally obvious to me as I spoke for the first time, why my doctor told me it would be about 6 months before I could work confidently as a singer again. It was pretty scary and I preferred not speaking, to speaking with that flawed voice. Luckily, I understand how important it is to look at things the way they are and not the way they used to be, and I think that will help me recover. (Fingers crossed).

The second day that I was allowed to speak, I was given 20 minutes. I said a few quiet sentences here and there, but was hesitant about it. Speaking to someone within and arms distance away was alright, and I was told to speak quietly, but not in a whisper. I used my voice as little as possible and hated using it. On the day that I was allowed 30 minutes of vocal use, it was also the day of my post-op appointment. So... this morning. I was in a bad mood because I was nervous. What would my doctor say? With my history of health problems, I felt that it was probable that I would get bad news. Power of positive thinking! Yeah yeah. I know. Even though I think positively, I can’t help it when that feeling creeps up on me of the possibility of things going wrong. 

The morning was a little dramatic anyway because here in Seattle, nobody is prepared for snow and we happen to be in the middle of a winter storm. On our way to the clinic we called to make sure the office was still open (and by we I mean my mother/interpreter called). They were open and I got in shockingly quick for a place where I’m used to spending 3-4 hours. I was the only one of their patients to show up that was scheduled that morning. They told me that it was alright to speak with them and that I could just put it towards the 30 minutes that I’m allotted. It was embarrassing to me, speaking with my torn up voice. Over the last few years I’ve really come to learn something about myself. I HATE not being in control! I don’t mean to say I’m a control freak... that usually involves other people. What I mean is that I don’t like getting wasted, I refused to be hypnotized, and I’m a perfectionist when it comes to singing, just to name a few. This was problematic at the office today because of what I was required to do. 

They sprayed stuff in my nose and put a strobe camera down it all the way to my vocal chords. Not super fun, in case you were thinking of trying it. This has been done to me what feels like a million times since I signed off my ship in May, but I still don’t like it. (Just a little side note... the fact that the camera had a strobe light on it is actually very important. The reason that I was misdiagnosed in the first place was because my Idaho doctor didn’t have this high quality equipment and used a normal scope. He could see that there was something wrong but didn’t get a sharp detailed image of what it was. Then he made a wrong guess.The strobe makes the vibrations of the vocal chords appear to slow down so that it’s much easier to capture a crisp image. If you’re worried about your throat and plan to see a specialist, I recommend that you make sure they use this feature.) Anyway, so the image from the camera was projected onto a screen and there were a handful of doctors in the room giving me instructions and taking charge of different things. The vocal pathologist did a lot of “repeat after me” tunes. This was the hardest thing for me to deal with because I’m used to being able to match something without thinking about it. Now, there were some things I couldn’t do at all. There was one note that the doctor asked me to hit strongly and I couldn’t even hit it softly. The break in my voice was so large that it sounded like a train horn instead of a sweet note. Luckily I was told that all of that was normal. They said that I needed to speak with confidence instead of using the meek voice that I had the past two days. I totally feel sorry for boys going through puberty now. How can you speak confidently when you know it’s inevitable for your voice to crack?? Well, I suppose the answer in this situation is to remind myself that I just had surgery. Of course it’s not going to sound right for a while. I think it’s a pretty good excuse ;)

When asking why it sounds the way it does now, my doctor said that the skin on the surface of my vocal chord has to get back to vibrating properly. They told me the surface is a bit stiff right now, but it’s normal for this point in recovery and that I’m actually ahead of the game. It’s hard to believe, but they have no reason to lie. He also mentioned something like I have to build up a little tissue again where he removed the cyst, but I’m not sure I heard correctly. The point is, like any sports injury, if I want it to heal right I have to be a super compliant patient and give it time. Dr.Merati said that the most important thing now is not to get overly confident. He said he can’t tell me how many times his patients have a great first post-op appointment, then get over confident and overdue it. I promised to be a perfect patient! Normally the next appointment would be scheduled for 2 weeks later, but since I have to travel, he wanted me to come in 3 weeks instead... combining my 2 week and 4 week appointments. He had to assure me that it was alright to do that because of course I don’t want my commute to hinder my recovery. After being convinced that it was safe to do so, they left me with a few parting tasks. When I return home, they want me to start up with the vocal therapy again. This time I’m set up for success! I can’t tell you how frustrating 6 months of vocal therapy was when I was misdiagnosed. It just felt like one failure after another. This time I plan on recovering! I no longer have to hum every hour now that I’m speaking a little, but they want me to do quiet scales (that are bound to sound like shit for now... pardon my French...) and some sliding notes here and there. So far, everything is looking to be on track. One more scary doctor’s appointment to check off my list. Now, back to Coeur d’Alene, and onto my recovery!  

One Week

So it’s been a week since I had my vocal chords worked on. I honestly haven’t done much of anything interesting while recovering, but I do have a few stories for you. 

People do a lot of interesting things when you can’t speak to them. Mostly I think it’s really cute :). The first thing that amused me was a button that I was given after my surgery. It says “I am on vocal rest. Therefore, I cannot speak. Thank you.” The only problem is that in order to read the button, a person would have to practically touch their nose to my boob. They had to make the writing small so that they could fit the hospital logo and information on it as well. I actually wore it around a bit too :). People also think that I’m deaf. I don’t condone pretending to be deaf when you’re not, however I’m not proud to say that I have been guilty of going along with it a couple times. I can’t be bothered to try to explain things to people. I’ve become too lazy to get out my whiteboard and dry erase marker and find myself just letting things go. When I had questions at a grocery store the other day, one sweet worker kindly mimed out everything for me. She was so nice that I just went along with it! What else could I do? 

 

So, as I mentioned, I’m getting too lazy to take out the whiteboard. Because of this, I’m learning a lot! For instance, I found that I correct people all the time. At least, my mother anyway. Probably not a good quality, but it’s one I didn’t even notice I had! I finally realized it when my mother said with confidence “What’s that over there? Oh. Nope. That’s just a Kentucky Colonel.” What she was referring to was KFC. Kentucky Fried Chicken. It really bugs me when she makes things up like that and just goes with it! Normally if I could speak, without thinking I’d say, “KFC”. Easy right? But now, it required me digging through my purse to find a marker, then getting out the white board and writing it. She was driving so by the time she could read the note, A: she’d have no idea what I was talking about which would frustrate me more, and B: she wouldn’t care. I realized that it’s not worth it to correct her. Then it occurred to me... is it ever worth it? If I know that people won’t listen to me anyway, why waste my breath? Why let it annoy me? Along the same line, I’ve just stopped answering what I dub to be stupid questions. Normally I go out of my way to explain things to people if they’re confused, but I really can’t be bothered. I’m finding that by not responding, it’s only a matter of seconds before people realize how pointless their questions are and answer them themselves haha. Okay, ok. No such thing as a stupid question. BUT there is such a thing as a redundant or pointless question ;). As it is... I’m lucky if anyone tries to speak to me right now at all!

I love socializing. I get so bored being cooped up, and being in Seattle for medical purposes also presented me with something else. Friends! Yes, I’m from North Idaho and I have friends there, but the people that are here in Seattle are friends that I know from ships. The head office for the cruise line that I worked for is here so many of my ship friends are in and out. Most of my friends recognized how boring I could be after surgery and therefore rushed to see me in the few days leading up to it when I was allowed to speak. One of my friends I hadn’t seen in a year, and he didn’t get ahold of me until after my surgery. I was frustrated that I didn’t feel well enough to do normal young people things like go to a club or have a drink or... well, talk. After the weekend however, I was feeling well enough for dinner. If it hadn’t occurred to you by now... catching up with a friend you haven’t seen in a year when you can’t speak, doesn’t work very well! I was driving so during the car ride I wasn’t able to whip out the ole white board but it was better once we were at dinner. At one point, I had to remind him that he could talk. It was nice to see him and we had a good (silent) laugh, but the consensus was that it’s weird. He didn’t want to be the only one talking, so he just didn’t! Haha. This is very interesting to me because anyone who knows me is used to, as one friend put it, “rapid Shelly talk”. It’s funny how different people seem when I’m not egging them on with questions or sharing stories. I find it ironic that my biggest flaw (or... endearing quality as I’d like to think of it haha) is speaking too much and here I am without a voice. I’m all ears, but nobody is talking! 

Men

So before my surgery, I had a week of vocal rest to see if I could get the cyst size to go down while taking steroids. Now that I’ve had my surgery, I’m of course back on vocal rest, but I just thought I’d share some stories about what I’ve already experienced. 

Here are a few examples of how men treat me when I go out without a voice (Attention men: I’m in bars in North Idaho here. I don’t believe you’re all like this.): 

I’ve had many types of responses when men approach me in bars. Typically when someone is trying to engage me in conversation, I point to my throat and give a kind of ‘sorry... I can’t talk!’ expression. One guy got really angry with me, assuming I was just using a crap excuse to be non confrontational, and said “Yeah! Okay! Fine. I get it.” And stomped away pouting as I just stood there shrugging. More often than not, the typical response was one of irrational excitement. In one particular instance I sat at a table playing a sort of charades game with one such man which actually started out fun. Then he followed me around all night talking about how mysterious I was and how much he loved that I couldn’t talk. Now... men. If you are reading this, I’m just gonna throw it out there. I know you’ll say anything to get in a woman’s pants, but telling her that you love that she can’t talk is less of a compliment and more of a sexist 1892 comment. Just sayin. Ever since that incident I’ve had many more like it. On New Years Eve I carried around a card with me so that when drunk men didn’t understand that I couldn’t talk, I’d show them the card that read: “I’m not ignoring you. I’m mute.” The answer to that every time... “I actually LOVE that!” 

I have a friend named Erin that I grew up with. We were next door neighbors since I was 5 and we know everything about each other. She’s usually the one who drags me out even thought I can’t drink or talk, so she therefore becomes my interpreter. On many occasions she’ll sit next to me as a guy asks me questions about myself, and she answers all of them for me! It’s pretty hilarious and sometimes Erin comes up with better answers than I would. On New Years Eve this year, my interpreter got extremely drunk and this was the result:

Me, being mute and Sober decides to sit and rest my feet. Erin who is wasted (and my interpreter) comes over to give me a friendly lap dance. A cute guy approaches:

Cute guy: Hey! My friend and I would like to buy you ladies a drink!

Erin: (very drunk) Nope! Sorry! We're both staying sober tonight. We don't drink!

Cute guy: Oh!

Erin: We're strippers!

Me: (trying unsuccessfully to get the guys attention and show that Erin's joking)

Cute guy: (surprised) Oh! Well... tell me a little about that. I don't usually go to strip clubs.

Me: (unsuccessfully attempting to show that I think that's a good thing.)

Erin: Yep! PLUS I have a boyfriend so sorry. Guess you're going to have to go find a single girl and give her a big kiss!

Me: (Trying desperately to signal that I'M single!)

Cute guy: (confused)

Erin: Okay! Good bye now! (ushers him away)

I will say in Erin’s defense that she was right about him anyway. I danced with him later for about two seconds before he thought it was appropriate to lift up my skirt and I had to slap him. I guess he believed her about us being strippers and thought I'd be used to it... 

Anyway, so that’s my experience with men in my world of silence so far. I’m sure there are going to be many more random stories to come. Wish me luck! :)

Without a Voice: The Surgery

Brief Background: 

So let me start by giving a little background. My name is Shelly and I sing for a living. What’s a singer’s worst nightmare? Ursula steeling our voice forever. Or... something like that. As a solo guitar/ vocalist on cruise ships, I was required to sing for 7 days a week, 4 hours a day. I laughed when I heard that they were actually expecting that much, but I wasn’t laughing long. If you aren’t a singer, maybe this isn’t clear. OR if you’re like my friend Jimmie and have the body of a robot that wakes up the same time every day without an alarm and doesn’t know the feeling of vocal fatigue after 8 million hours of singing... you may need some further explanation. That much singing is crazy. It’s just nuts. It basically required me to sing at about 40% of my ability level because I had to totally cut all kick ass powerful songs out and stick with gouge your eyes out soft songs. Shockingly people liked those songs too, but this only worked for a while. As soon as I got sick and had to sing that much without rest for my clearly banged up chords, things went wrong. I was able to go almost a year on this cruise line before I developed a vocal cyst caused by overuse. I was initially misdiagnosed with vocal nodules which wouldn’t resolve. I burt through all of my savings during the six months that I was at home and out of work trying to heal with vocal therapy, something that usually only goes away with surgery. Finally, I flew to Seattle and got a second opinion where they gave me the news. I had a growth that had to be removed surgically. Now... I’m giving you my story!

I feel it necessary to explain this for three reasons. The first being, I know many friends are curious about what I’m going through and would be interested in reading this. The second reason is that I thought anyone might like to know the random things that a person without a voice experiences on a daily basis. The third reason is the most important to me. When I was googling (Yes. Super pro. I know) my type of throat injury (or any singer related throat injury) I found a lot of information out there about people having to cancel tours for throat surgery etc, but what I didn’t find was anything about their recovery. In most cases, I never even knew if people DID recover! The articles would say “...blah blah blah expecting a full recovery...” but I never heard about wether or not they did! Considering the fact that singing is my whole life and career, it was very important for me to see real proof that people get better... not just take my surgeon’s word for it (cause let’s be real... surgeons want to perform surgery. That’s what they do.). So because I hadn’t heard any recovery stories, I thought I’d go step by step with mine by writing a blog that documents the trials and tribulations of a singer AFTER throat surgery. Let me begin by explaining the actual day of surgery.

The Surgery:

I had to get up at zero in the morning. Really, the only time I see that time of day it’s because I’m still awake. I’m a musician. And I’m on workers comp. I sleep in. Okay so anyway, I got there bright and early with my mother who was my required ride afterwards. Of course I’d already done pre-op paperwork at my 4 hour appointment earlier in the week (oy vey) so it was pretty low key the day of surgery. I met a million doctors who asked me redundant important questions and wrote initials with permanent marker on my neck. They made me wear a flimsy gown with nothing underneath. We’ve all seen these but yes... they make you wear it for a throat issue. I guess that’s in case something goes wrong and they need to harvest my organs or something... which is really comforting. Okay I’m being dramatic. Back to the facts.

I was totally fine until my mother started arguing with a nurse. I was at one of the best University Hospitals on the West coast... arguably the best for Otolaryngology (yes. That’s a real word.) but without warning my mother started asking one of the nurses questions that made me nervous without having been prepared. She asked the woman (whose name I unfortunately can’t remember... MILLIONS of doctors I tell you!) anyway she asked him who would be putting the breathing tube down my throat. Being a singer they use a smaller tube because there is the risk that they can knick your vocal chord on the way down and permanently screw it up. Not good. So these things are important. My Doctor’s name is Dr. Merati, and I trust him completely to do as good a job as possible. That includes trusting his opinion on who will be performing the various tasks that need to be done. My mother got so flustered because she didn’t want a student to do it. The woman assured her that everything was all planned out and my doctor and an attending physician would be there as well. They started getting angry with each other so when the Doctor left I asked my mother to stop asking questions in front of me that made me nervous (NOW I was worried). A very nice resident came in (I liked his bedside manner. So nice!) He got my IV started and my wires hooked up. My mom started arguing with him over the same topic until I actually yelled at her to sit down and stop making me nervous. Then I started crying (crying is not good for singers throats. Either is yelling.) Luckily my mom understood my stress and politely sat down. Doctors were handing me tissues and I tried to work around my IV and monitor wires to wipe my eyes. 

The resident held my hand and was very kind and got me to stop crying in no time. If he was the student, I felt like I was in good hands. He said the attending physician has done this a thousand times, and even though he’s new, he’s done it hundreds of times. I wish it never came up but at least he calmed me down. ATTENTION: Parents going to support their children for surgery... I recommend that you ask freaky questions AWAY from the already emotionally unstable patient. Maybe not something that seems obvious, but just a tip. She figured it out when the attending physician showed up after I stopped crying and said “I understand you have some questions for me?” I kind of looked at her blankly like ‘Oh great. Not again. I don’t want to deal with this!’ Of course she doesn’t speak Facial Expressions, so after a second the resident said “uh well I think her mother does...” And luckily they left the room to discuss it. On the other side of the curtain. Pointless, but it’s the thought that counts so I ignored them. Soon they wheeled me down what felt like a thousand hallways and over bumpy construction zones and finally got me into the surgery room.

Dr. Merati was waiting for me and told me some jokes about how he was up late for poker night and was shaky cause he was kinda hung over. That made me smile and he gave just a few more details of what to expect and then the Anesthesia people did their thing and I went into beautiful perfect sleep. That’s all I remember until I woke up about an hour later! 

The first thing I remember upon awakening was coughing. Then-- feeling guilty for coughing. (Not supposed to do that. Bad for the throat.) I guess in my defense... they’d just yanked a tube out of my wind pipe. I guess. Then I notice that I hadn’t quite figured out how to breath yet which resulted in a moment of minor panic. Okay I’m exaggerating again, but I was nervous. Luckily the sweet resident was by my side speaking to me (I hardly realized it cause I was loopy as hell...) and I held out my hand for him to hold where surprisingly he picked up on it an humored me by squeezing my hand while I tried to figure out how to breath and swallow. It’s not like it was hard to do, but the entire right side of my tongue was numb (and still is as I write this later in the day). Also I had a raging sore throat. Duh. They asked me how I was feeling so I pointed to my stomach and did a thumbs down. I had a stomach ache and knowing that people vomit after surgery, I didn’t want to risk it (also not good for the throat. What is?) so I tried to express right away that I was nauseous. They knew what I meant and when they asked if I was in any pain I pointed to my throat. They asked how much on a scale of 0 being none and 10 being the worst imaginable and I held up 5 fingers. This not talking thing is pretty easy! They gave me something for nausea  then wheeled me in to a post op room. The woman there was giving me pain meds which helped a lot. She said I’m the only one who remembers to go straight to vocal rest when still that drugged up. Yeah bitches, that’s right. I got this :) Then she started asking me complicated Insurance question that were NOT easy to explain without talking.  I was annoyed about the insurance questions because they already had the information. I remember rolling my eyes and thinking ‘Really? I’m like, still asleep and five seconds out of surgery. Don’t you want to ask somebody else about this?’ She did, and got it resolved. Idiot. She was nice though so I forgave her. She fed me baby ice cubes and then a baby sip of apple sauce to try to keep me from getting more nauseous. Then, on to the next room!

This ride wasn’t as fun. The construction zones made me kinda dizzy but by the time the wheeled me into the second post op room I was fine. They had a humidifier mask attached to me which I kind of love and want :) And then I just slept. Unless they made me try to sip water or have more apple sauce. I haven’t slept like that in a long time. I didn’t even realize how worried I’d been about my surgery until it was finished. Of course I was drugged up so I’m sure that helped, but my mind was at ease for a little while. I didn’t even know how it went, but it was done so no more use worrying. 

After changing precariously back into my clothes, my mother took me home and explained what the doctor said. He had told me initially that he worried about how much scar tissue I may have developed during the time that I was singing with the growth. He said that it would effect how the surgery goes. I was very worried about that because scar tissue doesn’t go away. Luckily, my mom said that he told her they didn’t even need to inject steroids into the location like they had planned. Everything was soft and unscarred. Good news! Now... comes the hard part.

I had been hoping to work again in about 3 months. Everything is planned out to do a good transition gig (maybe more than that) in Jamaica where I can control my hours. Unfortunately my doctor gave me the news the other day that it will be more like 6 months. Gutted. We’ll see if I can prove him wrong. It will be a balance of being patient enough to heal, and being efficient enough to recover asap. Jamaica, or Idaho. Hmmm. It’s going to be hard to be patient. I’m required to go on total vocal rest (no speaking at all whatsoever. Or coughing. Or laughing. Or crying. NO noises! Haha). I have to do that for the first week, then beginning the first day of the second week I’ll add 10 minutes per day. Veeery slowly but better safe than sorry. I promise this will be my longest blog in a while hahaha. From now on, I’ll try to explain how my recovery is going. As for the rest of the day, they sent me home with antibiotics, acid reflux pills (preventative), and pain meds. I’m also supposed to take the extra strength mucinex. Oh my god I feel like I need a pill box like an old lady. Thankfully my mother is here to help me remember my regimen while I’m a bit foggy. Yes. I’m foggy now :). I forgot to mention that I’m also supposed to do some light humming out through my nose and sniffing sharply through my nose. I’m supposed to do this for a few seconds every hour. I forgot. He didn’t go over it with me and my mom mentioned it to me when I was heavily sedated. Only when I was writing this did I remember. Crap! There goes my plan to be a perfect patient. I’ll do better to remember tomorrow. Setting an alarm. 

So the end of my day of surgery is drawing near. I slept most of the day in a room with a humidifier, then acted like a zombie on the couch. My sweet mom crushed my medicine up in the rest of my apple sauce, made me my protein shake, brought me water, and later heated some soup. I feel like a baby again, but I think I deserve it :).