Speech Therapy Update #1

Hello, it's been a couple weeks since my last update, so I wanted to give an update on my progress I'm making in speech therapy so far!

As you may know from my last post, I started my speech therapy on June 18th and had my second session on June 24th, and so far so good!

I'm pretty sure I mentioned before that due to my nodules, my voice shifted into my throat to compensate which was causing my deep voice and hoarseness. In my first speech therapy session, my therapist was pressing and massaging under my neck and chin where all the throat/speaking muscles are to teach me how to do it at home and it caught me off guard because it felt a bit painful. She then explained to me that because of my voice shifting down in my throat, all my muscles in my neck/throat area were tensing from all the extra effort it's having to do to push my voice out, which is also effecting my voice pitch.

After my first visit, my rules are currently to:

• keep my speaking to a minimum
• do my exercises 3 to 5 times a day to bring pliability back to my vocal cords
• do massages and/or heating pads on my neck twice a day and whenever needed

I've been doing them 5 times a day consistently, minimally speaking, making sure when I do speak that I try to speak "forward" and not let it sit heavy in my throat, and of course drinking lots of water and using my nebulizer. I also got a humidifier for my room.

By the time of my second visit the other day, I made a ton of progress and my speech therapist was surprised! My hoarseness is practically gone, and now when I speak it goes forward instead of being heavy in my throat. I was shocked that I made progress this fast also, but I forgot that compared to most of her other patients I'm lucky in the sense that I don't have social obligations that require me to speak constantly, so me barely speaking except for therapy and exercises + doing the maximum amount of exercises and everything else I'm doing is speeding up the process.

I did have to do a fair bit of speaking at my recent appointment for speaking practice, and talking was making me exhausted after about 2 minutes. My therapist explained that since the nodules are causing a small gap in my vocal folds, it's normal to be out of wind after speaking a few words or sentences which will start to go away as I keep doing what I'm doing and shrink the nodules down. I also have to build the strength in my voice back because I haven't been able to speak with my normal voice for almost a whole year, so now that my voice is going back to its higher pitch, my vocal folds are like "???!?!?! who are you wtf"

The small downside is at my initial doctor's appointment on the 10th they said I'd have 3 or 4 sessions, but based on my medical notes it looks more like 8 to 12 weeks is the plan, meaning my speech therapy wouldn't be done until mid-August or mid-September ;-; But considering how rapidly I'm making progress, I'm not worried too much about it and I believe I'll be recovered before or by that time.

I asked my speech therapist when will we check my nodules again, and she said it's more about how I speak and sound rather than how the nodules look, but said it's up to me whenever I want to check. We're skipping a week of therapy to see two weeks of progress, so July 11th is my next therapy session and she'll be checking the size of my nodules on the same day.

As long as things keep going the way they're going, I do believe that I'll recover very quickly and be back to recording again in no time, but to play it safe I am going to be gentle with recording when I recover. I'll most likely only be recording 1 to 2 times a month, 1 to 2 times every two weeks, etc until I slowly get back to recording 1-2 times every week and get back to my normal schedule. Depending on my breath strength by then I may have to split my recording sessions as well but we'll see.

Overall progress is going good and I'm very excited! (Also I'll be posting a short voice progress audio when I get the chance so you guys can see how bad my voice was a month ago and before my speech therapy vs how I sound now)