Yesterday I had a procedure done; it’s called an “Autologous Fat Injection Laryngoplasty”. In layman terms, it’s a fat filler injected into your vocal cords or folds. This has temporary results and is done to correct malfunctioning vocal cords.
My infamous stroke had paralyzed one of my vocal cords. I gave it 6 years of therapy but it didn’t resurrect naturally.
There were 2 ways to look at this ;
One, I still had one vocal cord functioning, so although I sounded raspy, I could talk.
Second, I cannot sing anymore which is not a big deal because I was never a professional singer, I just sang for myself.
To begin with I was blessed with a great voice by birth. It ran in my genes, my maternal grandfather, my parents were all singers (not professional).
My brother is an exceptionally good singer and he really works hard for it too, but as I was growing up I felt too pressured to be constantly com[ared to him. This is absolutely not his fault, just that I could never perform under pressure. And so, I focused on something else I was good at; dancing. I trained in Bharatnatyam for almost 12 years while I continued singing for pleasure. All through school and college I sang and performed to my heart’s content. Music gave me solace and a lot of good memories. Infact, my relationship with my husband began after one of my singing performances. However, after my son was born, I bottled my singing into lullabies and taught him good music. Thankfully he was born with a good voice too and loves music as much as I do. Now I had a project, making my little boy a singer. I channeled all my musical talent to his training. And I found happiness every time he sang!
But then, life happened and I had a stroke. I lost my singing voice.
When I lost my singing, I realized how much it was part of my existence. I couldn’t humm while cooking, while doing my mundane chores. I couldn’t sing to train my son. I couldn’t sing to annoy my husband. I lost an extremely important part of me. I still dance as bleakly as I can and I do see progress. But my voice just didn’t seem to budge and so I finally decided to give this procedure a shot to see if it works.
Yesterday I got the 5 most painful injections of my life. At one injection, I twitched hard and the needle tipped my trachea. I stopped breathing for 4 seconds, my life flashed in front of my eyes. My son's face flashed first. Then my husband’s. The third, my fur babies. The fourth should have ideally been my mother but surprisingly it was my brother’s. Yesterday was an extremely important day for him so he had been on my mind all the time. The point is, at that moment I prayed to God that I don’t care if I can sing or not but please keep me alive to take care of my child!
This whole incident taught me two extremely important things in life;
One- Value what you have in your life. You’ll terribly miss it once it’s gone.
Two- There is nothing more important than your life and family. No matter how tormenting your life is, you’ll always choose life with your loved ones with all the struggles that come along, over death.
I’m not sure why life takes me through these routes but it always gives me a second chance to learn and correct and keeps me alive to write about it.
It is said that “where words fail, music speaks”. It was the other way around in my life, but I’m sure that has a purpose too.
I don’t know if this procedure will help my voice. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sing ever again. One thing I do know is I’m grateful for my family and my life.
Let there be music and light in all your lives.. Cheers!