My Heart will be Blessed with the Sound of Music... and I'll Sing Once More?

So, I like to sing.

Actually, I’ve probably been singing longer than I’ve been talking. True story. Just ask my brother, who had the extreme good fortune of sitting next to me in the rear-facing seat of the Oldsmobile station wagon as I belted out Wee Sing America. My goodness, those goober peas were certainly delicious.

Cassette tape sing-alongs and shower arias aside, I have been involved with an organized choir since I was in the fourth grade, where I proudly wore my bright, red felt vest as an extremely devoted member of the Penn Wynne Singers. So devoted was I that during one of our concerts, a girl in the back row tossed her cookies…and I kept singing, albeit while holding my nose. I’m surprised Carnegie Hall didn’t call me for a booking right then and there.

In fact, now that I think about it, a gigantic portion of my life thus far, has been spent in song.

I started taking music classes when I was 3 and knew most of the basics of reading music by the time I was 5. I started playing the piano in 2^nd grade, the viola in 4th and when I got to middle school, I added the hand bell choir to my instrumental repertoire. Throughout all of those years, I was singing: at church, at school, at camp, in the shower…in my brother’s ears…always singing.

Following my choral debut in the Penn Wynne Singers, I sang in the 6^th grade chorus and was giddily promoted to the advanced choir for 7^th and 8^th grade. When I entered high school, I was a soprano in the bizarrely named “Green Eggs and Jam” and later sang with the all-female a cappella group, Madrigals. In college, I joined my brother in the co-ed a cappella group, Symfonics, which I later directed. I’ve been singing in (and sometimes directing) the senior choir at camp since the age of 12. I am now a proud soprano in the Vienna Choral Society and I delight in returning to my church choir at home in Philadelphia for the holidays.

I think I can also go out on a limb here and title my ipod as the most random collection of every different genre of music known to man. I rock out to Aerosmith, study to Vivaldi, groove to the Beatles, passionately sing along to Disney, twang to Carrie Underwood and delight in a fabulous rendition of Panis Angelicus.

But, I digress.

The point of this post is not to impress you or alternately bore you to tears with my musical resume. Make no mistake, musically-speaking I am nothing special. But what is special is the fact that I have been given the true gift of spending most of my life in song.

I am somewhat ashamed to admit that up until now, I took this gift for granted.

You see, following my thyroid surgery, I unexpectedly lost the ability to speak for long periods of time, project my voice, easily swallow solid foods… and sing. 

Last week, a terrifyingly long black tube was snaked down my nose and into my throat to reveal that my right vocal chord is somewhat delayed and doesn’t quite move as it should. My doctor, however, is not convinced the delay is the cause of my problems and has, of course, scheduled me for a round of what always proves to be, extra special testing. This week I will do an hour of vocal chord testing and next week I will go in for an esophagram to try and locate any abnormal narrowing in my esophagus.

Fear not, my doctor assures me that the problem is not being caused by any abnormal growths or tumors…which is excellent, seeing as I hadn’t even pondered that as an option. Always nice to simultaneously add and subtract possible causes of vocal chord paralysis…

It could be that my body just needs more time to heal. There was only a 1% chance of vocal chord paralysis from the surgery and that may be a percentage that even I can work with. I’ve had two major surgeries in close proximity on my neck within 6 months. I think I can go ahead and make the case that spending over a year with a less-than-stellar nutritional status, probably didn’t help anything and I’ve undergone anesthesia 11 times in the last year…which is generally left off of the top ten healthiest lifestyle habits.

So the case could certainly be made that my body just needs more time.

But, it is still pretty weird. I open my mouth, expecting to hear the same sound that has come out of if for 29 years, but it doesn’t come. In fact, I’m not sure what is more startling-the fact that I can’t sing, or the fact that my attempt to sing strongly resembles a strangled cat.

Just in time for the Halloween haunted house? A spook-tacular singing sensation?

Perhaps I need to look into the side effects of candy corn deprivation...