Imagine going through your day without being able to speak. How would you be limited? What would you have to do differently? For business owner, competitive tennis player and equestrian Pat Areias, it meant finding a new normal. The Carmel Valley resident known for her passionate, charismatic personality often used her loud voice to her advantage – in both tennis and business. But a diagnosis of a vocal polyp left her with two choices: surgery, or changing her habits and going through speech therapy to decrease the size of the polyp.
A vocal polyp occurs when there is a hemorrhage in the vocal cord that then turns into a mass, causing disruption in normal vocal cord movement. Unless you're a singer or public speaker, you likely haven't given much thought to your vocal cords. But polyps aren't uncommon in adults, and often come with symptoms such hoarseness, loss of voice, and feeling like you have a "lump in your throat."
The first sign for Pat? "The poor quality of my voice. I had almost no voice, it was very in and out," she says. Pat's voice troubles date back nearly a decade, when she was playing a tennis match against her friend, who noticed the changes in her voice and urged Pat to see a doctor.
That was when Pat was diagnosed with her first vocal polyp, which decreased in size after speech therapy sessions. Years later, a second (and larger) polyp developed. "It interfered with every aspect of my life," Pat says.
Although surgery seemed like the surefire option to get rid of the polyp, Pat was determined not to undergo surgery and deal with the possibility of permanent scar tissue or other complications. "I felt like from the beginning I would get rid of the polyp. My mentality was we need to make this work without surgery."
That determination led her to speech therapy with Kendra at Central Coast Language & Learning Center Speech Pathology, and carried her through months of successful therapy sessions. But not without hard work.
Speech-language pathologist Kendra led Pat through a combination of speech therapy exercises to train her vocal cords, including myofascial release and massage. And outside of the therapy sessions, Kendra prescribed good voice hygiene habits for Pat. Pat worked on not raising her voice and yelling less, drinking more water, and consciously allowing her voice to rest.
It was all worth it. Months later at a follow-up appointment, Pat's doctor said her polyp was completely gone, filling Pat with a wave of relief.
"When I first started seeing Pat, you could tell she was very down about her polyp and at her wit's end," says Kendra. "Pat's passion comes through in her voice; it's part of who she is. But when you change your voice, it changes how people perceive you. To now have this turnaround of eliminating the polyp really impacted her life. She's now able to maintain her business and do all the things she did before, but also have a good voice quality with it."