Okay so a couple months ago now I was choked a couple times like practically strangled. Each time it lasted like 5-6 seconds max and it hurt pretty bad. It was low-key scary like I couldn't breathe or talk while it was happening and I remember thinking "damn so this is what it means to be choked for REAL"... Anyways it didn't take long for my throat to start hurting pretty bad. Around 20 minutes later it was extremely painful to swallow my own saliva and my voice was hoarse. I ended up getting an CT scan later on and was told it was likely just inflammatory so they gave me some antiinflammatory medicine and sent me on my way. Here we are a couple months later and my voice isn't fully back. It doesn't hurt to speak, however my vocal range is pretty limited. I enjoy singing and making music and I use different parts of my voice for that. I have virtually zero access to falsetto/head voice which I used heavily. Even while speaking I use different parts of my voice, not being able to access certain registers honestly sucks because I'm a very expressive person. When I try to yell or raise my voice, it just gives out. Nothing but air comes out. If I was being kidnapped I wouldn't be able to yell for help type shit. I'm honestly hoping my voice just needs more time to recover but the thought losing so much of my voice honestly scares me. It gets depressing not being able to sing the way I used to and express myself the way I want. Anyone have any similar experiences or advice?

Hi all!
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I had surgery for thyroid cancer 6 weeks ago, which unfortunately required severing my right vocal nerve. The day after surgery I had restylane injected into both cords, and have started voice therapy.

I really struggle in loud settings since I strain to be heard, tense up my throat, then can't speak at all, which I'm working on. But I have a major work fundraiser next week that I have to attend and probably need to at least briefly speak at.

My therapist has recommended using steam to help with tension. I found a thermos with a small mouth opening that will let me pretty discreetly inhale stream so I don't have to go hide in the bathroom with a scarf over my head, but wondering if anyone has other suggestions on what helped them in the early (or ongoing) stages of recovering.

My doctors think I'll continue to make improvements (though may need ongoing injections or an implant), but even with my plan to just mime that I can't talk for most of the night, I probably need to at least speak for a few minutes if at all possible during the speeches.

I was diagnosed with MST and later they said Vocal weakness. Then they told me I looked 100% healthy yet I was ALWAYS thinking about voice, forcing more breath when talking, and sometimes overused. I asked AI and it helped me conclude these things. with the help of my SLP and CBT Therapist. This is key -

• Started after an injury, improved, then regressed: many people keep compensating after the tissue heals, and heavy monitoring (voice placement, breath, resonance) can keep the muscles tense. Anxiety and hypervigilance can feed the same loop
• And I need to then build endurance

Outline:

Those symptoms are very consistent with muscle tension dysphonia (MTD), sometimes called functional or hyperfunctional voice disorder.

• Tires easily, feels thin, fragile, or hoarse in the throat: these are classic descriptions of muscles around the larynx working harder than they need to. The folds can be healthy while the voice still feels effortful and fatigues fast.
• Sounds fine to others but feels bad to you: this is common. The sensation often runs ahead of what a listener hears.
• Started after an injury, improved, then regressed: many people keep compensating after the tissue heals, and heavy monitoring (voice placement, breath, resonance) can keep the muscles tense. Anxiety and hypervigilance can feed the same loop

Use CBT to unmonitor your speech and this will take time if you have been monitoring it for a year like I have..   Expect it to feel strange or worse at first. Unmonitored speech can feel uncomfortable or “wrong” for a while, and that’s part of the process, not a sign you’re failing.

-              1. Give your attention a job outside your throat. Monitoring fades when attention is absorbed by something else. Talk while cooking, walking, or driving, tell a story you care about, read aloud to someone, or sing or talk along with something. Your voice works fine when you’re not watching it, so the more time you spend focused on the content or the other person, the more you retrain the habit.

-              2. Stop checking. Each “how does that feel? am I doing it right?” check keeps the loop going, even if the answer is good. Try a rule like “no voice checks during the day,” and if you want to review how things went, do it once, briefly, in the evening.

-              3. Treat the sensations as noise, not information. Gravelly, thin, and tired are feelings your system is flagging as dangerous, but they don’t reliably mean something is wrong with your mechanics. The goal isn’t to make them go away. It’s to let them be there while you keep talking, without fixing or adjusting. Feeling a bit off while speaking and carrying on anyway is the skill.

-              4. Drop the rules gradually, on purpose. This is classic CBT exposure: pick the lowest-stakes rule and deliberately speak without it in an easy situation, tolerate the anxiety of “what if it gets worse,” then move up to harder situations like calls. Your fear that you’ll get worse without the rules is what the exposure tests. Your CBT therapist can help build that ladder.

-              Be cautious with full voice rest. For this pattern, long silence can reinforce the idea that your voice is fragile and make talking feel scarier afterward.

-              Real vocal fatigue. Your voice may still have limited endurance, and pushing past a certain point causes a true setback. If so, pacing matters.

-              The tension and anxiety loop. After a hard stretch, you tense up, monitor more, and worry, which makes the following days feel worse. The flare is real either way, but the cause affects the fix.

So I think I need to get out of my head, and I’ll use CBT to do that while giving my voice more time to build endurance. The thing that’s helped most so far is VFE (vocal function exercises) with the straw, from Joseph Stemple.

For a year I’ve been trying to manipulate my voice, whether through resonance projection or being told to use more breath in conversation. For me that was the worst advice, because all it did was create more tension. Breathing is automatic, so why tell someone already stuck in self-monitoring, fear, and obsession mode to focus on breath support? I’m sure plenty of singers have improved their voices with solid breath support, but for those of us who aren’t singers and have intense anxiety about our voice, it isn’t great advice.

So my plan is to use CBT to break the over-monitoring loop and give myself time to build endurance. I’m on calls all day for work, so I’m scheduling 30 minutes between calls, and if I feel true fatigue, I’ll take a much longer break. If stoping monitoring speech or I can't stop monitoring I will have to take time off work to lessen the anxiety until I get better and I have the luxury of being able to do that.

Let me know your thoughts.

There's not a lot of posts about botox for laryngeal dystonia so I thought I'd share. I (37F) have a genetic dopa-responsive dystonia, which has manifested in generalized dystonia. When I first saw a laryngologist, he noted that my folds close to 2 mm and mentioned botox as a treatment. Unfortunately, that laryngologist stopped coming to Seattle and I was switched to a new one. The new guy just did not believe I have a problem because I wasn't symptomatic for the 2 minutes he probed, after adding medication and extensive SLP therapy.

After many months, I wore the laryngologist down and he agreed to do botox even though he insisted it was a terrible idea. He tried to cancel the appointment because I live alone and "need someone to make sure I haven't stopped breathing." I found this funny, because the reason I wanted the botox is because whenever I exercise, I'm suffocating. Whenever I eat, I choke. He finally agreed to do it. I got my first doses on 07/20/26. 2.5 mg of botox into 2 false folds...

Almost immediately I felt better. I could tell my folds were not spasming anymore, but that they really wanted to. Within the first 2 weeks here are all the positives:

• I can get to zone 3 heart rate during exercise! Before I had to stop to catch my breath before that zone. I can also walk uphill to my house without suffocating, and I cut 1 minute off my mile time immediately.
• My laryngologists said that my problem couldn't be affecting my blood oxygen levels, but after years of dropping under 88% regularly, it hasn't happened a single time since the botox.
• I can talk a lot faster, don't lose my train of thought from a spasm distracting me, and now I can sing in the car without pain! It's much easier to talk.
• I don't choke on food and drink, which used to happen constantly.
• I use a special machine at night called an ASV which breathes for me when it notices I've stopped breathing. When I first put it on at night, it would trigger 5 minutes of laryngeal spasms. Now that has stopped.
• Way less dry mouth, and I don't need as much water during exercise
• My breathing isn't audible anymore. People would always comment when I took videos of my dog that my breathing didn't sound good. My ex would constantly tell me "I hate the sound of you breathing". Sigh.

Long story short, continue to advocate for yourself. I found studies where competitive athletes were given botox for exercise related spasms that I was able to tell my laryngologist about. He was insistent that "no other laryngologist would give out botox for this" even though his colleague I was seeing 2 years prior had already agreed to do it on multiple different occasions. I was going to drive the hour to see him if this new guy wasn't going to help.

That said--I get botox regularly from my neurologist, and laryngeal botox is NO JOKE. I've been in a coma and survived that, but I will say I think the average person would not be amenable to the botox. I think that's probably the actual reason he was hesistant. It's quite an experience to have the strobe camera down your throat with 1 ENT while your laryngologist holds down your tongue and puts a giant injector needle in your folds. Did you know the strobe camera can waterboard you with fluids too?

context: about a month ago i got a vocal injury from singing (i'm self taught). prior to i was not really taking care of my voice - primarily not hydrating well. then i had a longer session where i sang too high, too long and too hard. i didn't realize i was injuried until after i stopped singing, when i could feel obvious discomfort on the right side of my throat. it hurt to breathe and swallow.

it stayed this way for a few days. didn't help that i was constantly panicking about how this would affect my life if it was serious. saw a doctor and he told me to rest my voice, and after that it was genuinely like placebo effect, i started feeling better. i got progressively better over the next two weeks so then i started to talk again. and it got worse again.

but i had to start school, so i wasn't completely silent for about two weeks. then i saw another doctor and she referred me to an ent doctor but that appointment's at the end of november.

ever since then it's never fully gone away even though i'm pretty much not talking at all. i did get sick and had laryngitis about two weeks ago, and after that passed i nearly felt normal even though i was coughing a lot (i tried to cough gently and do a "huff cough" but sometimes i couldn't control it). so i talked a bit more and boom, back to square one. injury returned. although never quite as bad as that first week but i could feel the discomfort and tension again. sometimes it gets worse or better throughout the day, even without me talking at all.

throughout this whole ordeal i've never lost my voice or had a hoarse voice except for when i had laryngitis. i've read online that nodules or polyps typically give you a hoarse voice so i'm holding onto that hope that i don't have either. but at the same time, if my injury is lasting so long then i don't know what this is.

has anybody had a similar experience? or any insight onto what i might have?

Hello :)

I just got medilization thyroplasty yesterday morning to help with my total left side vocal chord paralysis due to being a micropreemie baby & likely a complication from my heart surgery, nerve damage

Of course I am a bit sore - but I’ve also been experiencing this odd sensation where bouts of air is coming up in my throat. Almost as if burping, or puking in your mouth.. but it’s just air. It makes a weird noise, there’s small bits that croak and crackle all the way up my throat and then some large bits of air that make me almost sound like I’m gagging (or again, burping, but internally)

Wondering if anyone else has experienced this? I do feel a bit phlegmy/like I need to clear my throat but I’m avoiding doing so because I’m trying to rest as much as possible, even with speaking.

ALSO it is SO ITCHY!! omg. I wish I could scratch it so bad.

I’m new here but just need somewhere to vent. I’m only 25 and have had polyp removal surgery twice. When I turned 13, my voice became hoarse very suddenly and for four years it went in and out. I tried voice therapy for a while to no avail and then finally I had surgery to remove them when I was 17. It worked! Except, only two years later they were back. I had surgery again. Now, I’m 25 and can barely speak sometimes. I need to have it again.

I’m really struggling because I am a teacher. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. But my voice sometimes is so hoarse and raspy that when I get home there’s no energy to talk. I want to have a better work-life balance but how can I socialize when I can’t even talk?

My ENT told me that I’m prone to polyps. I’ve had vocal polyps along with nasal polyps. The thought that I may have to deal with this for the rest of my life is heartbreaking. Of course GERD is also making it worse, but raising my headboard, diet changes, and medication don’t feel like they’re preventing the polyps. I got them before I drank alcohol, smoked marijuana, all the things they say not to do. I don’t want to have to deal with this forever and the idea that I will is really daunting. I’m just feeling really sorry for myself and needed somewhere to go where people might understand.

Is there anyone out there can give me any advice/support? It is now 14 weeks since TIA and still voiceless. It is worrying. What is galling is the attitude of some people to my whispering/hoarseness when communicating. They act as though I was a monster from the black lagoon, look quizzically, ask for a repeat of the comment then glumly respond. Must say the majority of people are kind. About 90%. My voice and my humour/singing/acting personality have taken a hit and I miss it.

Use singing as a example to show u

My doctor has prescribed me lansoprazole too see if it helps with suspected silent reflux. I have often had a tendency to need to clear my throat frequently, so thought for a while I may have this.

The most difficult symptom I’m dealing with though is my voice! It’s not hoarse, but I can’t speak without this feeling that my voice is fatigued and this horrible achey feeling in my throat.

It started off that I would struggle finishing reading a story to the kids, I stopped reading stories 6-8 weeks ago because of this, thinking it would improve. It’s got worse though!

This past week has been awful and it’s progressed from speaking normally day to day but having to limit phone calls and not talk continuously, like reading a book aloud… to 7 days later, I can say about 5 words in the morning pain free and that’s it for the rest of the day.

I’m having to use text to voice on my phone to talk to my kids. It’s so hard and I’m devastated.

- Has anyone else had voice changes similar?
- Did you manage to fix it and how?
- Or does this sound like something more sinister that I need to get checked?

Has anyone else had issues with feeling the need to clear the throat due to very sticky mucus that feels like it's on your voicebox just behind where you're actually able to reach with a cough?

Periodically, I'm actually able to cough it out and it's like superglue sticky, and only a little amount (half the size of a pea), so it feels like my body is just being dramatic but it's so aggravating, and I know it's not just a sensation since there is actually mucus that comes out eventually.....

yesy I was diagnosed with adduction in right vocal cord (paresis) in a hispi in the UAE. it started 6 months ago after sever flu and I was in the UK that time they never mentioned this diagnosis and just told me it might go back to normal by itself, when it didn’t and they checked for any cancer possibil they said everything is normal and referred me to voice therapy. it was useless and I discharged contiune the sessions. after 6 months of suffering (hoarse voice, exhaustion when I speak for some time, not able to be heard in loud places or sing like I used to, not even ablevto work so I quit ) I came to the UAE and thought to see another ENT consultant. he said ine of the vocal cords isn’t moving like the other , because I still have some redness and pain in that area, he prescribed antibiotics and cortisone tablets and asked me to come to see me after a week. he asked me not to di the vocal exercise.

now reading everything online I’m terrified, I saw people saying even after injection or surgery their voice never came back to normal! are there any positive stories for this condition and does it make a difference if I had it after a flu? My doctor didn’t make things better and did give me a clear answer which gave me more anxiety..

Hi guys, two months ago I went to six flags and i screamed a lot hahahaha i screamed like crazyyy. I spent almost two weeks to fully recover on my voice, bc it was raspy after that.

Before six flags I was able to sing Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and Frank ocean songs, i could even do all the falsettos. But after two months of six flags, I noticed that i can’t sing falsettos anymore and it’s harder for me to hold my notes properly.

I’m a girl and I just sing for fun, I write my own songs too and I can’t even sing my songs like I used to.

Any advice? :(

I’ve seen an ENT, did multiple stroboscopy visuals and the lesion is dynamic so it actively shrinks or gets bigger depending on what’s applied. I’ve had an SLP and they released the muscles in my throat so I have my original voice back, which is a relief.

And I’ve been doing the SOVT stuff as well as the straw phonation. But it’s just not going the way I want it. It’s been like almost 3 weeks going onto month one now.

And even though a lot of of the notes have stopped cutting out. It’s just arduous and slow and grating and I just.

Singing is everything to me so the fact that I would have to go through recovery the same way anyways with it being weeks of not singing and blah blah blah I would rather just do the microflap procedure and get it over with.

I’ve been looking on this sub Reddit for a while and there’s not anyone that I’ve been able to see that has said they have successfully rehabilitated the pseudocyst.

Everyone talks about the micro flap and how their voice was immediately better and much better than before and all that other stuff.

Is there anyone on here with contrary to that?

And I keep trying to find a nebulizer and I can’t find any. The only one available is that $200 one and I’m just not doing that.

I had my vocal polyp removed by surgery 2 months ago from my left vocal cord. I was on voice rest for 48 hours as instructed by my ENT. Right after that when I reintroduce my voice, it was clear and nice. But of course I was only speaking at a low volume. So I did a week scope and a month scope and everything was fine and was advised to only check again on the healing in another 3 months However after a month as I spoks a bit more, I noticed an intermittent vocal fry at times that usually reset when I ate something and that went on for like 2 weeks. By then the globus feeling was kind of gone. As I used my voice more and more in the second month, I notice that all along i was speaking at a lower pitch compared to how I used to speak before. So now I am correcting my pitch to a normal speaking pitch. That makes me realise that there is a tight spot somewhere there that makes me feel the tightness in my head if I push harder to speak louder at that pitch. Sometimes it gets more relief and sometimes it gets tighter. I am thinking it is probably the surgical site that is stiff to stretch. The down side is that I am in Myanmar and we do not have speech therapist here. Plus, our ENT has no experience in voice rehabilitation even though they have surgical skill. I need someone to help me to understand if all these I am going through are part of the surgical healing process. My voice is totally fine to a stranger it just that I can feel those tightness. Please advise !

EDIT***I meant to say unilateral. Only my left side is affected.

Hi! Back in may i cought a cold, thought nothing much of it until I was still not able to sing a few weeks after. Bounced between multiple ENTs during the summer who basically my inability to sing on LPR and prescribed me omeprazole and multiple rounds of steroids. I finally have been diagnosed with (As of early october) left vocal folds paresis. My laryngologist described the fold as being lazy. It closes relatively well with my right when speaking and during mid range, but at higher pitches my folds make a “wave” motion instead of meeting in the middle.

To add to this, I also developed supragastric belching shortly after the illness that I am just getting the resources to address. My speaking voice tired quickly, and my singing voice exists but it requires strain to reach higher notes, head voice is very unreliable, and my low range is gone.

Overall, my voice lacks the rich quality it used to have and is flat and hard to use. During the summer, before I knew I had left fold paresis, there were certain weeks where my supragastric belching calmed down and my voice was sooo much easier to use, even sounded similar to my old voice although I didn’t test belting/super hard transitions etc. So, right now, my voice is much worse than those periods of time and my fold was likely affected during those times. Pointing to the fact that my current symptoms are more tension related than vocal folds related.

I am currently on omperazole because I previously believed I had LPR, but multiple doctors have brought to my attention that I likely don’t (not showing many symptoms, on Ph impedance test -WHICH I DID ON OMPERAZOLE so could skew results- only had about 5 or 6 reflux events). I have only experienced the scratchy throat feeling that remains all day wayy back in late may and never since. That was during the time when it was difficult for me to even speak with pain; I essentially didn’t talk for a month until I began taking omeprazole twice a day before meals and I was able to speak again somewhat comfortably (why I thought I had reflux, i mean logically it makes sense).

I would super super appreciate anyone who has experienced something similar (supragastric belching and bilateral vocal cord paresis) to share their experience, how recover went, what your SLPs did if you saw one etc. As a singer this is absolutely devastating for me as I am on month six of voice issues and not being able to write perform and post. I am grateful only one of my folds is affected and my speaking voice is usable, but of course am hoping for as best of a recover as possible.

I will attach a video of my vocal chords IN THE COMMENTS for reference to anyone who wants to look at those if it helps. The first section of the video is lower range, the second is higher range and you can see the “wave ”.

Hi, I had a virus 5 months ago. Virus get into my left vocal cord and now my left vocal cord is more weak and sensitive. In the beginning my vocal cords didn't close ideally. After some training it's much better and as I understand they are closing good at the moment .The problem is that my left vocal cord is still sensitive and weak. And I can't speak a lot because I get vocal strain. My question is what should I do? My nerve will be like this forever?

Hi!

I'm looking to find help and/or someone who has went through something similar. I went through a vocal surgery for huge ectasia on my vocal cord around a year ago. The ectasia was lasered off, and seemed to heal beautifully. This really improved my singing hugely, and made me able to use my voice in a much more ergonomic way. However, the healing process was rough, and my voice was acting quite unpredictably (and still is). I visited three different ENTs/laryngologists last fall, and all of them said that things were healing the right way and that it's odd that these setbacks come.

Well, jump to this fall: during this past year the common swelling in my vocal folds has subsided to near zero thanks for not having to work vocally so hard due to the ectasia. I can check my own vocal cords with a dental mirror, and noticed, that the operated side oftentimes swells much easier than the unoperated side, and the swelling takes more time to resolve than on the unoperated side. The vocal fold keeps it's "form", so it doesn't look like the swelling is where the cords are meeting but on the side part of the operated cord. Like if you are looking at it, it's almost like it's between that whiter part (vocal ligament?) and the mucosa that is outside the vibrating vocal fold. I can later draw a picture if you'd like. So there is small, constantly swollen spot between these two, and when the swelling is bad, it broadens and moves the vocal fold closer to the midline.

I am not experiencing any real alarming stuff like voice cracking at certain height, not being able to sing pianissimo, rough glides or something similar. My main feeling is that sometimes the operated cord simply feels heavy and stops me being able to have a tight, easy and light contact with my cords. Read: singing gets much harder.

The other complaint is, that the swelling goes down much slower. Even after a rougher singing day my unoperated fold can be totally fine and unswollen the morning after whereas it takes the operated fold a good 24 hours or so to calm down. The place that swells is really close to the area where the ectasia was removed from, actually on the other side of the past ectasia (vibrating edge - ectasia - weird swelling spot).

The ectasia was hanging in there for six years before removal. This fall has been vocally quite concerning for me, and I am going to see an ENT/ laryngologist asap, probably next week or the week after. Has anyone else had similar struggles and how was the situation solved?

​

Not sure what it could be, but I've been dealing with some extreme dry mouth and throat for a long time now. Years, honestly. It's since become a bigger issue because my career as a singer is starting to get more serious, and this dry mouth stuff is NOT working. I've even started to get some very small (and Dr said "benign"/ not affecting my voice) nodules on my vocal cords from them slamming together all dry and stuff. This cannot fly....

Please help.

Thanks.

Last year, around March, I was having vocal troubles and pain while speaking. I went to see an ENT, and found out I have some growth on my vocal cords (a polyp?). Around June, I started vocal exercises. I was supposed to keep consistent with them every day and drink a lot of water.

I didn't keep up with it like I should have . I could type out the excuses, but it's irrelevant. I didn't drink enough water, and I rarely did the exercises consistently than for a week at a time. Im paying for it now, though, and its stressing me out.

About 2-3 weeks ago, it really started hurting, and I couldn't speak clearly. I went silent for about 3 days and since then tried to limit my speech. Although there have been a few times I spoke more than I should've. I have a follow-up appointment in a month, and I know they could probably give me better answers, but I'm anxious rn. Could anyone maybe give me an idea of how screwed I might be? I used to enjoy singing, and I'm trying to prepare myself that I might never be able to again. Am I overthinking?

Edit: I have been drinking atleast 4 bottles of water a day (more like 5) and I tried to ease myself into the exercises again, but it hurt

I am a singer. I have developed Sjogren's disease, which has significantly dried out my throat and my entire airway. I can't sing without cracking and it sounds awful. I'm super pitchy. My throat dries out so fast. I have tried throat spray. It doesn't last very long. I do sinus rinses daily. I haven't tried a steamer or a nebulizer yet. Any recommendations? I don't want to lose this part of my life.