Over the last 8 years, I've been struggling to maintain the longevity of my vocal range and speaking / singing voice. It has gotten to a point where I've completely lost my upper singing range and have nearly eradicated my falsetto. I need to figure out a way to get my voice strong and healthy, like it used to be, if I have any hope in continuing my path of being a professional performer.

I've been trying to trace back what's been going on with my voice, and it seems to be a mix of a bunch of different things; some physical, some physiological, and some emotional.

The first time I had any actual concerns about my vocal chords / voice box was in the summer of 2015 - when I hurt my voice whilst projecting / yelling over a crowded room of 56 middle school children. At the time, I was currently the lead in a musical where the character was a bit high for my natural vocal range - mostly all belting - at the same time as I was teaching / directing a children's camp for an after-school outreach program. I raised my voice at the kids and my voice "popped". I didn't lose my voice, but it was instantly thinner and softer and I couldn't project my voice at all. I put myself on vocal rest for 3 days, using an ice pack and a heating pad alternatively on my throat. My throat was on fire, my nerves in my neck felt pinched, and the lymph nodes / glands in the right side of my neck were completely / noticeably swollen. I had no understudy, so I would vocal rest during the week as much as I could and still perform and belt on the weekends. I saw an ENT a couple weeks after the show closed and they found no signs of physical damage whatsoever. I became stressed out and gave myself a cold and went to the doctors to inquire about my glands and they repeated back to me that I had athlete level health and there was nothing physically wrong with me or anything out of the ordinary.

My glands / lymph nodes continued to swell and feel pinched from time to time, and I really struggled with my performances and my belting of any kind without a strict regiment of steaming 3-4 times a day and always having throat lozenges / natural singer's throat spray. And in 2018, for the first time in my life, I woke up one morning with no voice at all. I was playing a character with a growly voice, and so I figured I had just way over-done it. I had to get an understudy and go on vocal rest for 3 days to get my voice back to close the show strong the next week. I was very concerned about polyps and such because I began choking up little white pieces out of my throat - they looked like micro pieces of popcorn, and they smelled horrible. I looked it up once and I think it said they were callouses or scabs that fall off the vocal chords or something like that - which I didn't think was possible. So I went to a different ENT to recheck my voice-box, and again, they said nothing was wrong with my throat physically.

So in 2019, I took a break from musicals and began to do more straight plays and films, and I moved out of my parents' house and moved in with my partner. It was that time I became aware that I was actually allergic to all of the dust and dog hair that was covering my parents' home, and I had been living in that for 27 years - which was a major cause of my sinuses being crazy and becoming ill with so many colds. I also had asthma whilst living with my family and never really questioned why. In living with my partner, I started to eat organic foods, cook more, exercised more, and I just stopped falling ill. I felt pretty great, until I started experiencing minor setbacks with acid-reflux. I was doing vocal exercises to keep my voice healthy, but then in the middle of the night I began waking up as if I'm drowning in my sleep with a sore throat and a difficulty in swallowing. I tried to do a bit of research because the doctors and my family kept telling me to just take anti-acids / tums, but I didn't want to - and so I started drinking alkaline water instead and cut-back on how much tomato I had been cooking with. It was hit or miss some nights, but the acid reflux just kept happening. And I could feel my vocal chords eroding away from my stomach acid.

In 2021, we decided to get out of the cold, dry mountain air of Colorado and move to humid and sunny California. I learned that my acid reflux was actually a case of my stomach NOT being acidic enough rather than being too acidic, and I started taking a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar 20 mins before each meal. I completely cured my acid relfux. But my voice is still weak. I started performing again in 2022 and started to again - experience stress and discomfort in my voice and needing to put myself on vocal rest for days at a time.

I saw a German osteopath in 2022, and she told me that she also didn't find anything wrong with my throat or neck, and suggested that I relearn how to speak because of the way I've conditioned myself to hold my tongue as I talk, and that's contributing to my voice getting tired quickly. She did a realignment with my mouth, but I didn't feel any different. She suggested it could be in my head. It was then I realized, and shared with her, that in 2007 - when I was hired as my first lead in a musical, a friend of mine told me that he was so impressed with my vocal range because what I was singing / belting was actually "very high" and "difficult to do". I had never really thought about it, and had never had any issues belting before, and yet, after he said that to me - I suddenly became aware of how hard belting is. I suddenly began cracking upon my high notes. I became very stressed out that I wouldn't be able to sing that high anymore and became physically ill with bronchitis. I wasn't supposed to sing, but I performed anyway when the show opened and just waited for the blackouts to cough and hydrate. Because I got sick, the director told me that my first lead must've been too stressful for me to carry and so she wasn't going to cast me as a lead ever again. Needless to say, I was very upset by this. The German Osteopath told me that's easily where an emotional block formed within my throat and to explore that.

I began to reflect upon that and realized that - yeah, I was able to sing very well until my old friend got into my head that singing high was difficult. I did some spiritual practices to release this belief that singing is difficult and that singing high is hard and requires tension to sing. I felt a lot better, and my speaking voice was a bit stronger and more freeing, but I still couldn't maintain this open feeling. I began to feel more sinus pressure, and I stopped taking the apple cider vinegar, and my acid reflux came back every once in a blue moon. My glands stopped swelling, but my voice continued to thin out.

In the beginning of 2023, I decided to go to another ENT one last time to make sure there was no irreversible damage from the acid-reflux, and the ENT again repeated that there's nothing physically wrong with my voice. He did suggest, however, that my mucous glands were over-active, and that I have a lot of mucous around my vocal cords - he said that could easily be a reason why my voice struggles to sing at a higher register. He suggested, as well, that I get a vocal coach and relearn how to speak and sing. Because I wasn't convinced that I hadn't any nerve damage or lymphatic cancer or something, I went to another doctor and had my partner sign me up with her Canadian Osteopath. The doctor told me I was healthy and that my blood tests were normal and healthy. I told him I was underweight - and if that could cause issues with my glands and he said no. The Canadian Osteopath told me that my stomach was crooked and that my intestines needed to be turned. She also told me that my nose was broken, which I had no idea about. She suggested that the pressure closing down from my broken nose, and the fact that my stomach was in the wrong place, I had pressure from both sides of my larynx, and how that could cause issues with my voice. She put my stomach back, tried to un-break my noise (unsuccessfully), and my acid reflux hasn't been back ever since, but my upper vocal range is completely gone.

I thought back and realized that I kneed myself in the face in 2013 and broke my own nose, and I did have major issues with longevity and stamina in my singing since then. My partner also had me look back to when my glands used to swell, and I was taken back to the summer of 2014 when I was performing in a Vaudeville show in Virginia City, Montana, where I had housing in a wood cabin for 5 months. I woke up in the middle of the night once with my throat on fire! The glands in the right side of my throat were incredibly swollen to the point where I couldn't sit still because I was in so much pain and discomfort. It even hurt to swallow. I didn't know where it came from at the time, I wasn't bit by anything, and it wasn't like I got a cold from someone else at that time either. My partner told me it sounds like I had mono 'the kissing disease', and that's probably exactly what that was, but I didn't know it back then. I held an ice pack to my throat for 48 hours and the swelling came and went throughout the years at random times.

So anyways, that's the full story. And writing this now, I just remembered that I used to be a really good singer as a kid until my dad criticized my singing voice when I was 8. But that's what's going on with me and what I'd love support with. I'll put the timeline in the bottom to make it more comprehensive.

1997 - my music teacher told me I had perfect pitch and the voice of an angel and put me in choir.
2000 - my dad criticized my singing voice and I quit choir and joined sports.
2006 - my sister signed me up for a musical and I got back into performing.
2007 - my friend told me how hard belting was and didn't know how I did it - I became stressed and got bronchitis during my show as a lead and my choir teacher told me she'd never give me a lead again - struggled to sing high ever since.
2013 - broke my nose - lost vocal stamina - wasn't aware of it.
2014 - got mono, the 'kissing disease' - glands started swelling on and off.
2015 - first vocal injury from overuse - visited an ENT / Doctor - found no signs of injury / illness.
2018 - first time I completely lost my voice - began coughing up throat callouses - visited another ENT / Doctor - no signs of injury / illness.
2019 - moved out of my parents house and discovered I was living with a lot of allergies - healed my asthma - change in diet gave me acid-reflux - burned away my esophagus - alkaline water didn't help.
2021 - cured acid-reflux and moved to California.
2022 - throat began clicking as I moved my neck - visited a German Osteopath - told me to re-learn speaking due to tongue placement.
2023 - throat still clicks, no vocal stamina, falsetto is gone, whistle tones are gone, upper range is strained - visited ENT/ Doctor / Canadian Osteopath - high mucous production, realigned my stomach and was told to hire a vocal coach.