I am ten days into my voice therapy and I have seen only very minor improvement. But I’ll stick with it. I return Monday. I’ve been thinking about the problem a lot. How did my throat muscles get so constricted and strained in the first place? They say anxiety could be a factor. I admit that I’ve had plenty of that. I used to use tennis as a stress outlet.
But think there is a more straight-forward explanation. In late 2006, I remember feeling frustrated at choir practice that I couldn’t seem to generate sufficient volume. Some days I was half of the tenor section, and the other was a Deacon. Our poor choir director needed more volume from us, but my volume knob seemed to be broken. I knew my legs were weak, but I hadn’t considered this weakness to be due to MS. Now I am certain that it was. In fact, I think the “weakness” was in the diaphragm that pumps air through the vocal box. And it wasn’t limited to singing. The body’s natural reaction to diminished vocal volume is to use throat muscles to compensate. A year and a half later, guess what? Those muscles are extremely strained. Not only do I still have the diaphragm weakness, but my larynx is a mess. Result? I get about 30 syllables an hour. After that, it is bad. I think I start straining from syllable 1. I don't know how to not do that.
My hope is that I can slowly undo the throat problems. I don’t know if there is anything that I can do to address the diaphragm weakness, sit-ups? But it is still working. If I can undo the larynx strain, I may just have to get used to being a soft-talker, or maybe even a soft-singer.
Yesterday I did a lot of talking, relatively. I took several phone calls, I wanted to teach the lesson in FHE and then I had to help Ryan prepare for his Spanish final. It was bad. It actually started hurting. Tomorrow I am seeing a friend that is here from Utah on business, but today I don’t have any “talking” scheduled. I’m going to try to give my larynx a real break. I mean, I’ll do my therapy drills and such, but let’s see if a break will help. I’ve been up for over two hours and I have used only 23 syllables.
I'll keep you posted.
1 comment:
So I didn't do so well at this. Kara didn't like this plan since we don't know if it would even help. It wasn't worth irking her. But she was running errands for a good stretch so I did give it a rest. But evenings are hard, especially if you need to help your son prepare for another exam.
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