STORY BY

Anissa Anderson Orr

Speaking—whether to quickly capture the attention of a wiggly toddler or to quietly instruct a college student—has been an essential part of Donna Kennedy’s teaching job for nearly three decades.

So when she woke one spring morning in 2008 to find she couldn’t speak, Kennedy was in shock. How could she communicate with her students, their parents, her colleagues and her boss? How could she work?

“I completely lost my voice. I couldn’t say a word. Nothing, ” says Kennedy, a senior teacher in child development at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. She works in the infant/toddler laboratory and teaches college students how to care for children in the lab. “I struggled to continue working, but I couldn’t do basic things, I couldn’t answer the phone, participate in meetings. I was completely shut down.”

Kennedy reluctantly took a leave of absence after working for several months with no improvement in her voice. Anxious to regain her voice and return to work, she went from doctor to doctor (allergists, ear, nose and throat specialists and even a famed multi-specialty medical clinic) in search of what caused her to lose her voice. Instead of answers and treatment, Kennedy found little comfort and conflicting advice. One doctor told her to stop talking completely and drink water every five minutes, leaving little time for her to do anything (except go to the bathroom), much less teach.

After nearly a year of searching for answers, Kennedy’s daughter, a resident at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, suggested she see voice specialist Ronda Alexander, MD, an assistant professor of otorhinolaryngology at UT Medical School, part of the UT Health Science Center at Houston. Alexander determined that a combination of factors caused Kennedy to lose her voice, including years of using steroid inhalers for her asthma and overusing her voice. The steroid use allowed a fungal infection to develop in her throat and on her vocal cords.

After several months of treatment, including surgery to remove a polyp on her vocal cords (caused by the fungal infection), switching to a different steroid inhaler, starting allergy shots and speech therapy, Kennedy has finally regained her voice.

“Now I can go back to teaching in the fall,” Kennedy says, relief evident in her quiet, still–healing voice. “I know I am on the right track.”

‘You feel totally alienated.’

She adds that she learned much about human behavior in the 15 months she couldn’t speak.

“In parent/teacher conferences, I would write an answer to a question on a chalk board and some parents would write their response back on the chalk board, like I couldn’t hear or talk,” she says. Other times, people would avoid talking to Kennedy or ignore her because she couldn’t speak. “You feel totally alienated. It felt really awful. Losing my voice became quite an emotional experience for me.”

People take their voices for granted, not realizing how much they rely on the spoken word in their jobs and their everyday lives, says Alexander, who treats professional singers, but also teachers, daycare workers, business professionals and stay-at-home moms with voice problems.

“The voice is just as important to us as our signature,” Alexander says. “Having a significant voice problem can lead to social isolation, affect your job performance and every other aspect of your life. You don’t realize how important your voice is until you don’t have it anymore.”

A finely tuned instrument

The sound of your voice is made when air passes through the larynx, bringing the vocal cords closer together and causing them to vibrate. Swollen vocal cords, often caused by colds or allergies, don’t vibrate the same way as healthy vocal cords, causing a raspy or strained voice, or preventing a person from speaking at all. Problems often occur when you continue to speak instead of resting your voice, which many dedicated professionals are apt to do, Alexander says. In some cases, overuse can cause a callus or burst blood vessel to form on the vocal cord.

Occasional laryngitis is common, Alexander says, but signs of a real voice problem persist after a cold goes away.

“Watch out for a change in effort to produce your voice, a change in your ability to reach notes you normally could and changes in your ability to swallow,” Alexander says. “After any kind of cold, your voice will be scratchy, but if you continue to have voice problems after 14 days, see either your primary care doctor or otorhinolaryngologist (ear, nose and throat doctor) to see if there is a voice problem.”

Your environment affects your voice health

In addition to colds and allergies, pollution in your environment and smoking cigarettes also injure the vocal cords. Being overweight, drinking beverages that contain caffeine, carbonation and alcohol and eating fatty foods also hurt the voice because they encourage reflux, which damages the vocal cords with stomach acid.

“To keep your voice healthy, keep a healthy lifestyle,” Alexander says. “That means no tobacco products, no smoking, moderate alcohol intake, drinking water and keeping a healthy weight to reduce reflux.”

Teachers should also pay close attention to their teaching environments, especially if they have voice problems or are at risk for voice problems. Alexander advises teachers to be careful with the volume of their voice, because voice levels naturally rise to compensate for noisy environments. Speak at a moderate volume whenever possible. In some cases, teachers may need to use a microphone to reach their students or modify their environments in other ways to make it easier for their students to hear them, or to muffle background noise. Teachers with substantially damaged voices may need to take a leave of absence to heal.

The American Academy of Otolaryngology also recommends trying not to speak in an unnaturally low or high pitch and avoiding frequent throat clearing, which slams the vocal cords together. Instead, drink sips of water to lubricate the throat. Teachers may consider using visual cues and other non-verbal methods to get their students’ attention, such as flipping the lights on and off.

Now that she is returning from her leave of absence from teaching, Kennedy says she will no longer take her voice for granted. She is learning when to talk and when to listen instead.

“When you don’t have to say anything, don’t,” Kennedy says. “You don’t realize how you are overusing your voice. When you are forced to be silent, you learn a lot about your students and yourself.”

 

 

Last Updated: 8-12-2009

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