August 23, 1999

I was told that I was born with Spasmodic Dysphonia and it's incurable. I noticed around November of 1997 I had a hard time speaking. My throat felt really tight and it was clinched off so much that I couldn't even get my breath out. I didn't understand what was happening to me and just thought it would pass. After a few months the tightness in my throat when I tried speaking didn't go away. So, I decided to start asking around. I graduated with a Theatre degree and had some voice instructors that I went to. No on could help me so I saw a doctor at Scripps Hospital and I was then referred to an ENT doctor. He told me I had spasmodic dysphonia and I had two choices. I could try speech therapy that didn't have too high of a success rate or I could take Botox shots in which the doctors inject a needle into my throat and put this serum into my vocal cords. I decided right then and there that I wasn't going to risk it with a doctor injecting something into my throat. So I started speech therapy. After a few months it got very frustrating and some nights I was working so hard on my sentences I would be sweating. These sessions proved to be of no avail. So for one year I just dealt with a voice that was scratchy and/or missing parts of words. During that time I dealt with all kinds of reactions from people I encountered from people making fun of me to people saying they were encouraged by me. I finally got to a point where I was sick of dealing with this condition and just wanted to be better. So I checked the internet and I came to find Dr. Morton Cooper and his Direct Voice Rehabilitation. I went for an evaluation and he said my prognosis was excellent. So I have started the program and just within the first day I felt and saw improvement. Since that first day I haven't gone back once to how badly I talked when I first arrived. It's a lot of mental work but is, and will definitely pay off, and is much better than living with spasmodic dysphonia especially knowing that Direct Voice Rehabilitation is a cure.

Ginger Chang