For those of you who haven't seen me anytime over the last year or so, I've been having some issues with my voice. Mainly, it doesn't work like a voice. If it were a fish, you'd throw it back. That is to say, it doesn't project, it's often raspy and it's just not... loud enough.
For those of you who have seen me in the last year and knew something was up with my voice, you may not know this: I have a diagnosis. It's a condition caller Recurrent Respiratory Papillomatosis, or RRP. It's not horribly common, but it's not unheard of. Basically, it's a virus on my vocal chords that causes persistent growths that interfere with my vocal chord vibrations, thus inhibiting my ability to speak. There's actually a foundation for it here, and a neat video on a possible treatment here. I actually spoke on the phone with Dr. Zeitels, who is in the video. Dude's worked with, like, Steven Tyler and Cher and he took the time to call me back, which I thought was pretty nice.
While this issue sort of come to a head in May of last year, this isn't necessarily a "new" affliction. You may remember tendency to clear my throat and lose my voice, which has been the case for as long as I can remember. While I can't say with certainty I've had this for years, I don't think It's unreasonable to assume my previous throat issues are probably related.
Now the next question is generally, "what are they doing for you?" The answer is, there's not much they can do. The regular treatment is using a laser to cut the growths off (not as invasive as it sounds). That's why if you saw me in January or February, you may have noticed my voice was better. The issue with that is, the growths generally tend to come back. There are some drug treatments (eg. Avastin, the one they used in the video), but according to my doctor, treatments are generally quite spotty and there's not much good research.
The tough part about RRP studies is that it's such a sporadic condition that the growths could just not come back one day. So in the case of the video, that could have happened anyway without the Avastin and it's impossible to know for sure how effective the treatment is until they do a double-blind study with some decent numbers (which in and of itself is not an easy feat, since it's fairly rare).
On the plus side, I just went back under the knife (well, laser--there's actually no knife involved) today. So I will be better for at least a little while, and hopefully a bit of a longer while. And while it's impossible to say, I'm honestly just thankful I know what's going on. There's something about having a name for a condition makes it feel so much better, even if it doesn't tangibly change anything.
On a more personal level, yeah, it sometimes sucks having to repeat your order three times in a restaurant, or wanting to have a conversation and stopping yourself because of the difficulties involved. But there's definitely something to the idea of gaining perspective through loss. Yeah, I can't always talk, but at least I can still go for runs, or type in my blog, take a photograph, strum a few chords, or any of the other millions of other things that bring me joy.
I heard someone say once that having a stake in something you have no control over is good for you. I think this is definitely one of those situations. I am prepared to deal with this thing, or cope with it, if need be and I'd say I'm no less joyful a person because of it.
While my life may not be better because of this thing, but it's not significantly worse. So don't feel bad. While your head tilts and concerned looks are certainly appreciated, they're not horribly necessary. I'm A-OK. And as the vocal polyps are growing, so too am I.
While my life may not be better because of this thing, but it's not significantly worse. So don't feel bad. While your head tilts and concerned looks are certainly appreciated, they're not horribly necessary. I'm A-OK. And as the vocal polyps are growing, so too am I.
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