The first time I realized I could do theatre was when I was 8 years old. When my mom told me about an audition, my response was: “Wait, but is it on an actual stage? Like will people pay to come see me?” And then there was no turning back. I was constantly looking for shows to be in and classes to take.

The turning point for my voice could have been when I did The Miracle Worker, which was a co-production with Torch Theatre and the History Theatre. I played Helen Keller, which meant that instead of speaking for a whole show, I was constantly screaming, grunting, and shrieking, and making noises that aren’t normally called for in a theatre. I don’t remember my throat hurting at all during that show, which is why I say that was the beginning of my vocal issues. Right after that I did Ramona Quimby at the Children’s Theatre Company, where I played Ramona. Luckily it wasn’t a musical, but the problem was that we didn’t have microphones. It was on the main stage, which is very, very big, and we had over 70 performances. Every day I had to go onstage and be Ramona, who is a very loud kid. Towards the end of the run I remember I completely lost my voice, but I was told I had to go onstage anyway and they just gave me a microphone. After that I played Annie, and then did continuous shows almost without any breaks About a year after Ramona, Annie, and Miracle Worker, when I was in 7th grade, I started complaining more about my voice. My voice teacher at the time told me I should go to see an ear, nose, and throat specialist because she thought there might be something wrong. I went to see someone, and they told me I should just take care of my voice, it’s probably just sore from overuse. So I was a little more careful, but I didn’t think anything could really happen. I continued doing shows, and didn’t sing as much. Then, towards the end of 8th grade my voice was starting to really, really hurt. I was constantly complaining about the pain and finally my parents took me to another ENT. This time they decided to do an endoscopy. That means that they took a little metal tube that had a camera attached to the end and they put it in my mouth and down my throat to look at my vocal cords. First, they spray an awful numbing liquid all over the back of your mouth so you don’t gag, then you hold your tongue out with gauze while they put the camera back. The really cool thing about this was that you could just look at a screen and see your vocal cords. They have you sing different tones and you can see as your voice gets higher, the vocal cords move back and forth very quickly and tightly, and when you sing lower pitches, they move slowly in fluid motions. With that first scope we found out that I had nodules on my vocal cords. Luckily, they were just in the beginning stages.

Vocal cord nodules are pretty common in performers. They are caused by overuse or damage to the vocal cords. And the interesting thing is, it’s not the bumps that are causing the discomfort in your voice. Most of the time when someone has a sore throat, it’s because the muscles are sore from overuse. As people strain to make sound come out, little bumps are formed on the cords. These are nodules. And the more you use your voice once they’re there, the harder and more calloused they will become.

Once it was established that this is what I had, they referred me to a doctor at the Lions Voice Clinic. I was told to stop putting pressure on my voice for quite a while, so I stopped singing and I began speaking less. A couple weeks later, I started meeting with the doctor we were referred to. She told me that the constant strain on my voice had been too much, and in order to make my nodules go away, I had to rest my voice. I was instructed to not do any shows all summer, and I was to speak in a “special” voice. The trick was to keep it in your upper register and try to not feel anything when you spoke. Most people I spoke to just associated this with speaking in a high voice, but there was more to it than that. Pressure can be put on your voice when you experience hard glottal attack, which is impact that’s made by pushing words out of your mouth rather than letting them come out easily. So all summer I was extremely careful with my voice, trying to maintain a healthy pitch and avoid hard glottal attack. I didn’t scream, sing, or do anything that was too strenuous on my voice. It was really, really difficult, but I didn’t want to wreck my voice and my career forever.

Towards the end of the summer I went back to the ENT for one of my monthly endoscopes. The good news was the nodes were almost gone. They told me that by the time I was back in school, I wouldn’t have to be as cautious and they should have completely disappeared by then. However, at that point they saw a small hemorrhage. It had been almost hidden by the nodes before, and they said it could have been there for years. It wasn’t a big deal. A blood vessel must have popped when there was so much strain on my voice, and it left this hemorrhage. It should have been harmless, so that’s how we regarded it. I continued resting for the last month of summer, and started high school at SPCPA. After a couple weeks of school there, I went in for another check-up. This time the good news was that the nodes were gone! All of my hard work and restraint over the summer had paid off. But now of course, there was another problem. The hemorrhage that had seemed insignificant-that we were going to ‘keep an eye on,’had formed a problem. My body had reacted to it being there, and formed a small bump over it. Inside that bump was just liquid and stuff from my vocal cords. It was protecting the part of my cord that had the hemorrhage on it. Well, this wasn’t good news.

The doctors referred to the bump as a lesion.That’s not what it was specifically classified as, because it could also be known as a polyp or cyst depending on whom you ask. We’ll go with lesion for simplicities sake. So now we had another bump on my vocal cords, this time caused by something that could have been inconsequential. This was more serious than the nodules though, because often times lesions didn’t go away with just vocal rest. The majority of the people who had lesions ended up getting surgery. When my doctor told us this, she went over how the surgery would happen if we chose to go that way. The whole procedure and recovery process would be as follows:

I would be put to sleep, and then they would go in with long tools (they would watch with microscopes from up above) and simply scrape away the lesion. Though that seems fairly simple, after that the lengths I’d have to go to to protect my voice were extreme. If I so much as coughed, sneezed, laughed, or spoke up to a week after the surgery, I could permanently scar my vocal cords. After that it would entail weeks and weeks of slowly building up the ability to speak again without damaging myself. My cords would be extremely sensitive. And the thing is, we don’t even know if the surgery would work. Many things could go wrong, and most surgeons refuse to do an operation like that on a child.

My options were to either try to surgery, or spend a very long time on vocal rest in hopes that it would go away. We had a meeting with a surgeon and my doctor, and decided that because surgery was so risky, I needed to go on vocal rest for a month.

It has now been 3 and a half weeks, and I haven’t been in school since a week after my meeting with the surgeon and doctor. I’m allowed one sentence every 15 minutes, because complete silence might make my muscles decondition. I go back to school in 5 days. Even though I’ll finally be free to speak, I’ll have to still be careful until my next ENT appointment which is the Friday of my first week back. Everyone is hoping that the lesion will be gone and I can go on with my life. If not, and I have to get surgery.. well, that’ll be another story.

I only have a week left!!! Now it seems like just yesterday I was at the ENT and we were talking about going silent for a month. And now I'm just getting nervous about the end of next week when we go back and find out if the lesion is gone. If it isn't, then we're going to have to look into surgery. After surgery I would have an even longer period of silence, so we all have our fingers crossed that it's gone and I can go back to normal life. However, I suppose it'll still be difficult because even after this is over. I'm going to have to be more careful with my voice. If this whole experience has taught me anything, it's that it's better to be extra careful rather than just assume nothing will happen. Looking back on old videos or recordings, I can hear the stress in my voice that would be on any average 14 year olds. I'm singing, yelling, groaning, and never being attentive to what is going on in my vocal chords. I know that after this I'll be a lot more careful, and if I'm lucky the lesion will be gone and I'll get the chance to go back to normal life but with a certain mental filter that will protect me.

The most difficult thing lately has been my school work. I've been learning a lot of self-restraint because it's really tempting to go on facebook or watch a show when I'm supposed to be doing homework or cleaning my room. Without teachers to keep you on track and supervise your every move, it's hard to stay on schedule. But in less than a week I'll be back in school with structured learning and other people to interact with! Until then I'll keep a workin and hope for the best when I get a scope next week.

Halfway!

It's hard to believe I'm already halfway done. I can't seem to make up my mind on whether this has gone by fast or slow. And oddly enough, it hasn't seemed like such a challenge so far. It's sort of become the usual for me, and I can't speak for my family but I think that they're getting the hang of it too. It's hard to imagine going back to school, because that seems like a long time ago. I've gone in twice so far-once at the end of each week, and it's very odd to see my friends and teachers and not be able to converse with them. Meeting with my teachers to get assignments and make sure I'm caught up is pretty difficult, because it's hard to ask questions and really fill them in on my level of understanding. The schoolwork hasn't been incredibly overwhelming so far, mainly because I have to have it all done when I go to school on Thursdays or Fridays because I take tests, so I know that I won't be cramming to get everything done two days before I go back to school (which is only 13 days away!). On another note, I'm really excited because I'm learning sign language! I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos, and Googling random words so I can communicate basic things to my family. My brothers prefer to just make me mime things, but talking to my parents has become surprisingly easier. After just the first day, when we knew words like "mom," "dad," "hungry," "water," "work," "help," and "school," we could easily tell each other things like where we were going and what we needed. Before we could talk like this, it would take a long time for them to guess what I was trying to say or wait for me to write it down. So now I teach them new words every couple days, and it's slowly getting better.

I thought that by now I'd have some really interesting stories about the struggles of a mute 14 year old, but it's mainly just trouble with the outside world. Whenever I go somewhere, I have to have a friend or adult order something for me, or stand with me while I pay for something, because basic things like that take conversation that's not in the least bit memorable, but it involves conversing with someone, which I cannot do. If I'm doing anything like helping out at an audition, volunteering with my friend, or going to work with my mom-whenever I'm around new people, if someone asks me what my name is, or how I'm doing, I have to grab someone who knows me to explain. When this happens, the person inquiring usually looks confused that I couldn't tell them my name, and I think now the majority of people I interact with think I'm incredibly shy. Which is funny, because I am definitely not a shy person. But I know that in two weeks I'll be able to at least do basic things for myself, which is comforting. However, we're still not sure how much I'll be able to speak once the month is over. It will still be limited, because I can't suddenly start singing and chattering the way I did before. That would be too much immediate impact on my vocal chords. But at least I'll be able to enjoy simple conversation that's not slowed down by a marker and whiteboard.

Day 5

This is all kind of surreal. Never before have I had to stay home all day doing the same things I would be doing in school, in my living room. On top of that, if someone comes into the room and says "what do you want for dinner," or something of the sort, I have to stop what I'm doing and pull out a white board just to write my answer. It makes communication slow and in some cases uncomfortable. If someone I don't know very well talks to me, I have to scribble something down and hold it up while they read. However, the level of difficulty fluctuates. Sometimes during the day I'll be sitting and quietly working, and I'll think of how easy not speaking seems at that point. I think that if I just keep most things to myself, and communicate only vital things through my whiteboard I'll be fine and the month will pass by quickly. However once I go to the grocery store, or to a movie, I'm immediately on guard. I can't wander around places alone, because if someone asks me to hand them something, or if I need help finding anything, I have to grab someone who knows my situation so they can be my voice. But with all that aside, the situation is still very interesting. I have more time to just listen to people, and I'm learning a lot about just how much people use their voices. Also, after just 4 days (today is my 5th!), my voice is feeling better. For the past 2 years, my voice has almost always been causing me constant pain. The amount would change depending on what I was doing at the time, but it was guaranteed that I wouldn't ever not feel at least a tingle in my throat (I'm planning on writing a whole paper on what caused the pain-my nodules, and now my lesion-at a later point, so if you're curious that'll be posted here!). But after a week of almost complete vocal rest, the pain has almost gone away. We're hoping that the "month of silence" will make the lesion go away along with the pain, and after that I'll be free to do theatre and sing to my hearts content.

This past week hasn't been very exciting. On Wednesday my younger brother, Merrick, got to stay home from school, and the two of us went with my mom to her office at the college where she teaches. I mostly did schoolwork (I have a lot of it), and Merrick wandered around chatting with the secretary and other teachers. Later that day when we went to the thrift store (we can just acknowledge the fact that I go there a lot. It's the best store in the world), as Merrick and I were looking at Halloween costumes a saleslady came up to us. "Do you need help with anything? What are you looking for?" she asked. I had just used my one sentence (I get one every 15 minutes) a couple minutes ago, and she was staring at me expectantly. Merrick, also, being the 9 year old that he is, seemed to have forgotten that I couldn't speak and stood there staring at me. I wasn't going to answer her question, so I stared right back at Merrick. Our little staring triangle went on for a moment, until Merrick exclaimed "OH!!! No, we're fine." And the saleslady left, looking confused. Circumstances like this tend to come up a lot. If my mom introduces me to one of her co-workers, I just stand there smiling and waving at them until my mom jumps in and says "Oh by the way, Scarlett can't speak. She's on vocal rest." It's odd not being able to verbally communicate questions and responses. Almost as if I'm in a one-person silent movie, with bad miming and slow captions. However, I'm almost a quarter of the way done already, and I'm sure I'll find creative ways to spend my time and communicate with people. In the meantime, I have plenty of time to go thrift-store shopping, learn sign language, and watch Mean Girls as many times as humanly possible.

The Beginning

Yesterday (Monday) I started my "Month of Silence." But before we start referring to it as that, I'd like to make it clear that it's not really silence. We got an email from my voice therapist saying I'm allowed one sentence every 15 minutes, and I should do some very soft, short vocal warmups each day so my muscles don't decondition. So technically I'm not in complete silence for the next month, but considering what I'm used to, it's going to be really difficult. I'm not typically a quiet person, and I prefer to talk on the phone with someone rather than chatting with them online or texting. I'll also be out of school for the next month. I'm keeping up with all my work online and through email, and going in once a week to silently meet with my teachers. I'm not supposed to be at many social events where I could get excited and accidentally yell or make noise. Which means I'm going to be home a lot and doing quiet activities. Taking away the freedom of speech will be a real challenge, especially considering the fact that I'm the one holding myself back. I don't have something like tape over my mouth that prevents me from speaking, it's my own willpower that's stopping me. People say that the first day of everything is the hardest; the first day of school, the first day of a diet, or the first day of working out. So I'll tell you about my first day of vocal rest, and how weird it was to start off.

Last week I went to Target with my brother, and we bought three whiteboards and a pack of markers. After one day I've already managed to lose 2 markers and an eraser, so we might not have been as well prepared as we thought. We weren't exactly mentally prepared either. My mom and I went to the thrift store, and it was really difficult trying to communicate when every time I wanted to say something we either had to go through a ridiculous game of charades, which neither of us were good at, or we had to stop and my mom would have to patiently wait for me to write something out on the white board. Then, of course I lost my marker, so I had to text things to her. Once when my mom said "text it to me," I saw a woman passing by give us an odd look, as if she didn't understand why we had to use our phones to communicate. I got a lot of looks like that as my mom had to talk to people for me and do things someone should be able to do for themselves.

Monday night was also the Ivey awards. They're basically the Tony awards of the Twin Cities, a huge celebration of art and theatre where performers, directors, designers, etc. win awards. So many people from the Twin Cities theatre scene are there, and it's almost impossible to not run into people you know. Along with that, I was with a big group of friends. It was really, really hard to refrain from talking to people and catching up with the ones I hadn't seen in a while. Luckily, I had a friend who was with me the whole night who could explain and 'interpret.' It was a really odd experience for me, because I've never not been able to speak to people. I suppose I'll get used it though over the next month. I'm planning on learning some sign language so I'm not constantly making rooms stink with the awful smell of whiteboard marker. I'll also see plenty of theatre, and since my mom teaches at a college I can sit in on some of her classes. And then of course, I'll have this blog. I'm going to be updating this every couple days with stories and difficulties involved with having to tell people I'm a mime.