December Reflection Part II

Had I been blogging this year (see the previous post as to the reasons for this) I would have been writing about my nodes.

Yep, you read that right. This fall I was diagnosed with vocal nodes. Luckily, it was caught early enough that the doctor thought I could fix the problem with vocal therapy and avoid surgery. Whew! What a relief! The most interesting part of the diagnosis was that the problem seemed to pop up in the summer and, as the school year went on, got better.

What!? Nodes that get better once a teacher starts teaching? How can that be? Well, apparently, my singing voice is very well trained. It was just my speaking voice that was a disaster. And after going back to my church job as a choir director on Wednesday nights, a summer filled with multiple family reunions and play dates with kids, and just the talking involved in parenting, I had damaged my chords enough that I was noticeably struggling to sing. It was frightening! How can I be a Music Teacher without my voice! Not only that, singing is just part of who I am. To lose the ability to sing with ease was horrible.

Now, thanks to weekly voice therapy with Carol Roe at the voice clinic at Park Nicollet, I have my range back and can sing with much less effort. I am also learning to speak with more resonance. At the end of the month I go back in for a follow-up appointment with the Doctor to see if the nodes went away. I am still struggling with serious vocal fatigue by Friday but I am hopeful that I will be better than I was in the fall and that these lessons will stay with me so that  I don't have to go through this again. Ever.