by Kim Downey
My vocal cord appeared to be paralyzed following a total thyroidectomy for thyroid cancer in November 2020. I described my voice afterwards as sounding like a “quiet one-note puppet.” As the weeks wore on, my despair grew. I love music. I couldn’t participate in my church choir, and I couldn’t sing Christmas carols. The single pitch I had remaining was higher than my usual voice. I sounded like one of the muppets and it felt embarrassing. I resisted speaking up in meetings at work and church, and minimized my participation in conversations with family and friends, a total “180” from my previously loquacious, and yes, loud, self.
A couple days after Christmas that year, I drove to Ridgefield to go on a short hike and to explore some of the local shops. I had never been to Touch of Sedona, a gift shop selling healing and spiritual items, so I stopped in. I asked the owner, Marge, a question, but she couldn’t hear me while I was wearing a mask. I pointed to my throat while attempting to tell her I recently had surgery, my voice didn’t come back and I couldn’t talk any louder. The only other person in the store was a supplier, Nathan, who was unpacking product. He had observed our interaction and offered me a golden healer crystal. He said it is powerful, but it is not to be bought yourself, someone is supposed to gift it to you, and he wanted to gift it to me. I was very touched, graciously accepted it and thanked him. Marge presented me with a rainbow of sheer organza pouches to select from to hold the crystal. Some people are just so kind!
Around that time, I had been referred to an ENT that specialized in voice disorders, and I was sent to a speech language pathologist in Greenwich specializing in vocal cord pathology.
One morning in January, I answered a question on a Zoom call, and my voice started sounding “quivery,” gradually increasing in both pitch range and volume over the coming weeks. I was so happy! In retrospect, it appears that my vocal cord had been stunned following the surgery, thankfully not paralyzed.
By the end of the month I sounded largely like my old self and was discharged from speech therapy. The GPS took me through Ridgefield on my way home from Greenwich that day, so I decided to stop back at Touch of Sedona to tell Marge about my voice coming back and to request that she please thank Nathan again for me. I thought he would be happy to know about my voice returning. She told me she would remember to tell him, but she wouldn’t see him for almost a year. I exclaimed, “Almost a year?! Why?” Her response was that he only comes in one day a year for a few hours to deliver product. She said he is very focused on what he is doing, he doesn’t typically interact with customers, and he singled me out that day.
I thought, “Wow, what a coincidence that I happened to show up during the few hours in the whole year that he was there, upon my first visit to the shop!” I believe I was in need of a tangible reminder that I could touch that would give me hope, and it took the form of a golden healer crystal from a kind, thoughtful man named Nathan.