What's Wrong With Your Voice?

At the beginning of last year I started experiencing... laryngitis. This is devastating for anyone who uses their voice often such as I do.  I teach, I sing and I instruct at a gym.  LOTS of vocal demand.  When it got to the point where I was losing my voice more often than I thought was normal, I decided to see an ENT.  After doing a "scope" in my throat he told me it'd probably be a good idea to see a vocal therapist.   Apparently my vocal folds were swollen which made it difficult for them to close properly and produce sound.  After getting "scoped" again at the voice institute the diagnosis was, nodules.  So I started voice therapy and it really helped!  I was excited.  Probably to excited because I pushed myself a little to much when it came to singing and gave myself a bit of a set back.  After easing back on my singing practice and buying a voice amplifier so that I wouldn't have to strain when I taught both in the gym and in a classroom, I felt I was back on track but, while my voice was better than when I started, it still wasn't back to where it was before I started getting these problems.

I made an appointment with the ENT got scoped and he saw that the nodule was still there though not as prominent.  He suggested that I meet with a voice specialist and so I set the appointment.  After getting scoped yet again I got the news I never wanted to hear.  "It looks like you have a polyp".  Polyps are in my mind connected to vocal cord damage that's probably irreversible.  When he then said surgery may be required to remove it, the polyp that was on my vocal cord felt like it had swollen and was logged in my throat.  He suggested I think about it and come up with questions that I could ask at the pre-op appointment.

Since then I've done a bit of research and I now know that it's not necessarily all that bad.  The "surgery" isn't long and I don't need to be admitted into a hospital for it.  While results are not guaranteed (there are risks with any and all surgeries) the odds that my voice will get better are pretty good.  The way I'm starting to figure it, right now I'm not sounding the way I would like to sound, especially when I sing, so this will give me a chance to get back to where I want to be.  Surgery is scheduled for August 24th.  More updates to come after the pre-op appointment when I get my questions answered.