In the spring of 2008, I was working both as a preschool director and a community college instructor, teaching child development. At that time, I had been teaching adults for about 5 years, and working in early childhood settings for over 30 years. I relied on my voice, but in different ways. During that semester, I began noticing that my voice would sometimes crack, or ‘lose steam’, while lecturing at the college. I attributed that to allergies. Ever since I was about 8 or 9 years old, I’ve dealt with environmental allergies. I remember always having a box of tissues with me at summer camp in Wisconsin when I was a kid. The scratch tests revealed allergies to so many things, such as dandelions and tree pollen. All I could do was take antihistamines every summer-fall. I’ve never been plagued with sinus headaches or earaches, but colds often resulted in laryngitis.
For a few months, as I was noticing this occasional change in my voice, no one else seemed to be aware of it. I recall asking family members or co-workers. I think that because the full use of my voice would come and go (usually during teaching a college class), they just hadn’t heard what I heard yet. After a few more months of this inconsistency, of not being able to get a hold of my voice and not finding a way to get the right pitch, it was a friend who asked me when I was going to see a doctor. I had to admit that something was going on, unlike having laryngitis which eventually went away.
So, in retrospect, I am now thinking that these might have been some factors influencing my voice disorder: life-long allergies, 50 years of antihistamines and projecting my voice in a college classroom. I had to make the difficult decision that, unless something changed for the better, I couldn’t teach at the college the following semester.
Coming up…. Medical tests
