Some good news

I have some personal news I need to share.

On May 3 of this year, I lost the ability to speak. I woke up, tried to say something, and no sound would come out.

After dropping my little one off at school, I went to urgent care, where they told me to go to the emergency room. I spent much of the day there, and they were able to rule out some especially scary things: I had not had a stroke, and was not having any heart problems.

This was good news. But they weren’t able to determine what the problem was, and sent me home with a referral to see an ear, nose and throat doctor.

After more hospital and doctor visits, the cause was determined to be nerve damage. Specifically, the nerve controlling my right vocal cord was either compressed, damaged, or dead.

Thoracic surgery was scheduled for late May and I was optimistic it would restore my voice.

Unfortunately, it didn’t.

I could speak in a whisper, and people right next to me could usually figure out what I was saying, but I couldn’t sing, laugh, shout, or even hum. I was surprised how much I missed being able to sing in the shower or sing along to a favorite song on the car stereo.

Over the summer, various doctors tried a few things without success. Eventually it was decided if my voice didn’t come back on its own in six months (which was seeming increasingly unlikely), they would schedule me for a laryngoplasty, which is a surgery that adds material to a vocal cord, allowing sound to be produced despite the missing or broken vocal cord nerve.

The surgery was scheduled for November 6, just over six months since I lost my voice, and the day after election day.

The procedure itself sounded terrifying; they would keep me awake while they operated on my throat. They would make changes to the shape of my vocal cord through a hole in the front of my neck, then have me attempt to make sounds, and then repeat until they were happy with the changes they’d made.

So for quite a while I’ve had the “twin terrors” weighing on my mind: what would happen in the election, and what would happen on the operating table. In both cases, I tried to calm my anxiety by reminding myself that it’s out of my hands. All I can do is trust that the doctors — and the rest of the country — know what they’re doing.

They finished operating on me 12 hours ago. The surgery appears to have been a success. It turns out the doctors did indeed know what they were doing.

I don’t have “my” voice back, exactly, but I can speak in a normal tone, albeit a little raspy, and I think at this point if anyone who doesn’t know what happened notices that my voice is “off,” they’ll probably just attribute it to a sore throat or cold.

I still have a fear in the back of my mind that my new voice will disappear without explanation or warning like my old voice did, but I’m also so, so happy that, for now, at least, I can communicate the way I did for the first 50 years of my life.

And I’m cautiously optimistic that with vocal therapy, it will improve further.

So there’s lots of news in the world right now (much bad, some good), and this is my good news. I’m so thankful for everyone, especially Rachael, for supporting me as I struggled with this. The words of encouragement and offers of help from family and friends have touched me deeply, and I will be forever grateful.