speech therapist

I saw the speech therapist for the first time this week. She analyzed my voice and determined some exercises that would help. I now have homework to do each day to exercise the appropriate muscles. Basically humming musical scales for now. I will see her again every couple of weeks to monitor the progress. I'll received my next dose of chemo on Monday.

I am Amazing

We went to the ENT specialist to figure out why I was loosing my voice again. If you recall my left vocal chord is paralyzed and that was the first symtom that eventually lead us to find out that I had lung cancer. In March 2008 I had a surgery where they put a prosthetic in my throat to compensate for the left vocal chord paralysis. It actually worked quite well and for the last 12 months my voice has been pretty good. The last couple of weeks my voice started going down hill again and we were concerned that the prothetic was failing or that I might be loosing function of the right vocal chord as well. Yesterday the ENT doctor put a scope down my throat to look around. He was suprised and amazed at what he saw. The left vocal chord is partially functioning again. He kept saying how AMAZING that was since he had never seen that happen in his 30 year career. The reason my voice is so hoarse is because the combination of the prosthetic and the partially functioning left side is closing the gap too much, and I am not getting the proper vibration of the chords in order to speak properly. If the the left chord comes back to full function we will remove the prosthetic. In the meantime we will leave it in and I am going take some speak therapy sesssions to help me adjust to the new situation (can you say ham-bur-ger), the doctor is confident that I will be able to improve my voice significantly through therapy. - Mr. Amazing