“I’m sorry. I can’t hear you.”
If I had a dollar for every time I have heard those words over the last couple of years…
I am gradually losing my voice. I used to tell people, with no evidence to back it up, that my chemotherapy treatment from nearly four years ago probably fried my vocal cords. It sort of made sense to me given all the ways that chemotherapy ravaged my body.
Wrong.
I have since learned that this Demon Disease™ I have inherited degrades the neural pathways that allow us to do things automatically without thinking, such as speaking at a normal tone or standing up straight. My voice is becoming gravelly and soft. I can speak up, even yell if I have to, with enough effort. But it’s hard to sustain over time.
There is good news, however: I can create a new vocal pathway by training my voice to speak more assertively. It’ll be tiring at first, but over time, it should become more natural, says my new speech therapist.
The key to this transformation is vocal exercises. It’s not easy to describe them, so I won’t try. But let’s just say that I’m glad I don’t live in an apartment with thin walls.
I now have a team of specialists, and I leave my medical appointments with them fascinated by how I can push against this disease and train my body to do things differently. Parkinson’s may want to barrel unhindered through my body, but I can slow its progress.
So if you pass me in my car and see me talking loudly to myself, I’m not crazy. That’s just me thumbing my nose at PD and learning how to live life on my own terms.