My Vocal Cords: Before and After Surgery

Hey Everyone,

It's been six weeks since surgery and four since I last checked in--so I have a lot to catch you all up on.  This post is going to be split into two parts. It will start with an update on how my voice has been doing in the last month since I checked in, and then I will show you pictures of my vocal cords from different stages of my recovery, starting at my diagnosis in May of 2012, continuing to now. The transformation is truly amazing.

Disclaimer: vocal cords look like a vagina. If you don't believe me, scroll down. I promise, there are no pictures of actual vaginas on this blog.

If you just want to know what my voice sounds like now, go down to the very bottom of the post.

How my voice is doing now and what I have been doing to get it there

It has been over six weeks since surgery, and my voice is doing incredibly well. It's been really hard to physically and emotionally get to there. Here are some notable things about this process.

1) I have learned how to talk completely differently. This doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but realize that no one ever taught you how to speak--you just do it. The way I naturally spoke, however, trashed my vocal cords, so I had to learn a whole new technique. Instead of putting pressure in my throat, I have been taught to put the vibrations of my speech into the roof of my mouth right behind my front teeth. If you want to know what I mean, hum on a comfortable pitch and really try to feel the vibration caused by the sound. Then, sing an ahhh or ohhh sound on a comfortable pitch and try to move around where you feel that vibration. It's really freaking hard. Now think about doing that every single time you open up your mouth to speak.

2) As a result of this new technique, my voice is higher. For a while, I would make sound and not recognize my voice as my own, almost as though I was looking into the mirror and seeing a 75 year old man staring back at me. Over time, I have come to embrace my higher voice, but it has taken a while.

3) I have been given the green light to start singing again, a little bit. I cannot yet sing in the car or other places with loud ambient noise, but I'm OK with that. For now, I'm singing mostly to help reenforce the sensation of having the vibration in the right part of my mouth.

4) I no longer am restricted to a certain number of minutes of vocal use an hour, but rather, I can rely on the way my throat feels to dictate what I can and cannot do.

5) I believe wholeheartedly that I will sing and write music again; I believe I will be able to perform again as myself with my own voice, not with a voice I am ashamed of. This is huge.

Vocal Cords Before an After

Vocal cords (or vocal folds) are what allows us to make sound. When you breath in, they spread apart, and when you send breath through them, they come together and vibrate at very high speeds (hundreds of times per second). The following video shows what normal, healthy vocal cords (not mine) look like when in action. If you want the scientific terms/explanations for how all of this stuff works, Google it.

Now, on to the good stuff:

May 10, 2012: I went to the Voice and Swallowing Center at UCSF and they took a video of my vocal cords. It looks and sounds quite a bit different. Your speakers are about to sound like they broke in half. Sadly, they are working correctly--my voice sounded that bad.

My vocal cords were not healthy, but rather, had cysts. Cysts are basically large puss filled blisters/callouses inside the tissue. I should mention that vocal cords should be around an inch tall by a quarter inch wide--mine were WAY bigger. It took far more energy to move them than it does for people with normal vocal cords, leading to the strained sound; the cysts prevented them from vibrating normally, leading to the raspy sound I had. My doctors told me that my cysts were among the biggest they had ever seen. I guess that makes me special?

The traditional protocol with cysts is to remove them and then do speech pathology work during recovery. My doctors decided to take a different route with me, realizing that if they took out the cysts before my behavioral patterns had changed, they would have come back again. Consequently, I spent the summer working with an incredible speech pathologist, Soha Al-Jurf, and three months later (August 2012), my vocal cords looked visibly better, albeit still very unhealthy. Notice how much higher my range can go without cracking:

Even though they look healthier, my cysts were still HUGE. At the time, though, I thought my voice was in the best shape possible. I went back to school for my Sophomore year at Claremont McKenna, and during winter break (January 2013), they took more pictures, showing even more improvement:

In March, I met with the surgeon, Dr. Mark Courey, and we took some more video. He decided that
I would be able to have surgery in the summer.

I had surgery on May 29, 2013, and Dr. Courey was able to remove the Cysts and much of the scar tissue that had accumulated in my vocal folds. The following video and pictures are from the day I was taken off voice rest (June 2013), meaning that the muscles responsible for moving my vocal cords had basically not moved in a week and were stiff as can be. This was among the most frustrating days of the summer, because it was like moving back to square one, unable to get sound out.

Even so, my vocal cords look healthier.

This last video, taken six weeks after surgery shows a completely different set of vocal cords. They come together like normal vocal cords, produce clear sound, and are not incredibly swollen, but rather flexible. Yes, it still sounds breathy (notice the hissing quality to it), but this is because I am still learning the technique that my vocal cords are only now small enough to handle.

I'm in a good place right now. My voice has been my focus for so long, and now I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I hear the light at the end of the tunnel--in my own, new, voice.

If you've read this whole post, give yourself a huge pat on the back, because it was quite long. I hope you learned something about vocal cords and what it takes to fix them when they get damaged. If you have any questions about any of this stuff, feel free to ask!

Best,
Becca