V. Four Weeks After Surgery

June 17th, 2015 


I am now a little more than halfway through my healing process, and I am so excited to see what happens these next few weeks.

First thing on the docket: I ran my first 5K this weekend. Because of the many weeks of limited speech and the countless walks/jogs, I decided to try and train to run 3 miles without stopping and signed up for the Color Run in Los Angeles. For those of you that know me, this was a really tough goal. I have never been a runner. But this goal to run without stopping and "finish the race" really made my dreams for vocal healing tangible. It reminded me that your mind is a powerful thing. Even though your muscles might be aching, you have the power to keep running.

In conclusion, I received the gold medal at the 2015 Color Run at Dodger Stadium for winning first place and being the fastest runner they've ever seen. The USA Olympic coaches have been contacting me nonstop, but I said I'll think about it. *

*(Yes, everyone received gold medals. Yes, I kept a 10 minute mile pace. Please...Don't shatter my dreams)

Last Thursday, I started small, short singing exercises with my speech therapist -

IT. WAS. AWESOME.

I was cleared to speak for 15-20 minutes per hour, and was given a set of three singing exercises to do, twice a day as well as the previous exercises as a warm up, until my next therapy session.

Because that pseudocyst was there for so long, my muscles and vocal cords found what worked. Now, as I am beginning this process, I have to retrain my brain and muscles to do something completely different and break old singing habits. You'll see in the video below I am moving my neck around to promote no tension while singing.

Within each day, there are good moments and then moments where my voice seems to be really struggling and fatiguing quickly. It has been hard to determine whether something is wrong or if the voice is just getting tired and I need to take a break. Another difficulty of mine is deciding whether my voice is too tired to do the singing exercises or if the exercises are just what I need to do to build them up. Pretty much a lot of:

I'm worrying about nothing stop worrying should I worry the worrying is making it worse.

....aaaaannnd your 15 minutes are up. haha

I have attached a video below to show you where my speaking voice is at and the singing exercises I am doing every day. I am really excited to show you my progress!