After 35 Years, Woman Regains Her Voice; Now, She Has 'So Much' To Say
"There's so much that I have inside of me that I wanted to get out," Jan Christian of Alexandria, Ky., told All Things Consideredhost Michele Norris today.
Now she can.
Thirty-five years ago, at the age of 17, Christian's windpipe was crushed when she was injured in a car crash. AsCincinnati's WCPO-TV reported last week, "she couldn't speak above a whisper and for years, avoided the awkwardness of trying to explain why."
But doctors at University Hospital in Cincinnati were, after several recent surgeries, able to give Christian back her voice.
Christian says it's a thrill to "be louder and more clear. ... And now I'm able to express myself."
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VOICE OF HOPE
Surgery restores vocal cords crushed in a long-ago accident
After 35 years living without a working voice box, Jan Christian is rediscovering what it feels like to be heard.
"All I know at this point is, there is someone out there that needs to hear my story of hope," she said.
Christian, 53, from Alexandria, Ky., has not been able to speak out loud since her larynx was smashed in a car wreck when she was a teenager. But after multiple surgeries to reconstruct her vocal cords and surrounding tissues over the last year at University Hospital in Cincinnati, Christian is learning how to speak out loud again.
Hospital officials can’t say for sure, but they suspect Christian’s 35 years may be the longest any patient has endured before getting his or her voice restored through surgery.
"I am full of joy and can't wait to see what's next," Christian said in an email interview with The Daily. A flood of media interviews led doctors to put Christian on "voice rest" over the weekend.
Christian's condition, which made normal conversations and telephone calls difficult, was isolating and emotionally traumatic, she said. She had to rely on a whistle to call out to her children.
"Not having a voice is sort of a disease of alienation," said Sid Khosla, an otolaryngologist and director of the Voice and Swallowing Center at the University of Cincinnati, who performed the surgeries that gave Christian her voice back. He said he had performed about 25 similar operations over the past few years.
The accident flattened the cartilage surrounding Christian's vocal cords. The misshapen structure kept the vocal cords from coming together in front, as they must do to vibrate and create a sound when air passes over them.
Khosla painstakingly reconstructed the voice box, rebuilding the layers of the badly damaged vocal cords using muscle and fat from Christian's cheek and other places in the body. Later, he scraped away scar tissue.
The surgeries left Christian completely silent for eight months, Khosla said. But the final surgery was done last fall, and Christian has been undergoing voice therapy ever since. Khosla said learning again how to speak at full volume can be difficult and frustrating.
In recently shot videos, Christian's voice is still hoarse, but clearly audible, like someone getting over a cold. The voice, Christian said, is changing her outlook.
"My future is definitely brighter," Christian said. "Everyone is telling me to write a book."
The night of her fateful car wreck, Christian was out celebrating New Year's Eve with friends in Colorado, where she grew up. The driver had been drinking, she said, and ran into a telephone pole. The impact sent Christian lurching forward, her neck smacking against the dashboard.
"I don't remember pain, just panic when I tried to talk," Christian said of the accident. Christian told a local television station that she sounded like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" when she tested her voice.
After the crash, Christian's life went on, albeit in more hushed tones. She went to cosmetology school with a tracheal tube in her throat, which she wore scarves to cover. Scarves, she noted, were not considered stylish.
But lacking a voice didn't hamper her dating life. "Guys would say, 'Come closer, I can't hear you,' or my favorite, 'You sound sexy,'" she said.
At 21, Christian met her husband while out dancing. She has now been married to Randy Christian for 32 years, and says he is her greatest support and the love of her life. The couple joke about how her forced quiet has affected their marriage.
"My husband says he has almost the perfect wife," she said. "A woman that can't talk."
"All I know at this point is, there is someone out there that needs to hear my story of hope," she said.
Christian, 53, from Alexandria, Ky., has not been able to speak out loud since her larynx was smashed in a car wreck when she was a teenager. But after multiple surgeries to reconstruct her vocal cords and surrounding tissues over the last year at University Hospital in Cincinnati, Christian is learning how to speak out loud again.
Hospital officials can’t say for sure, but they suspect Christian’s 35 years may be the longest any patient has endured before getting his or her voice restored through surgery.
"I am full of joy and can't wait to see what's next," Christian said in an email interview with The Daily. A flood of media interviews led doctors to put Christian on "voice rest" over the weekend.
Christian's condition, which made normal conversations and telephone calls difficult, was isolating and emotionally traumatic, she said. She had to rely on a whistle to call out to her children.
"Not having a voice is sort of a disease of alienation," said Sid Khosla, an otolaryngologist and director of the Voice and Swallowing Center at the University of Cincinnati, who performed the surgeries that gave Christian her voice back. He said he had performed about 25 similar operations over the past few years.
The accident flattened the cartilage surrounding Christian's vocal cords. The misshapen structure kept the vocal cords from coming together in front, as they must do to vibrate and create a sound when air passes over them.
Khosla painstakingly reconstructed the voice box, rebuilding the layers of the badly damaged vocal cords using muscle and fat from Christian's cheek and other places in the body. Later, he scraped away scar tissue.
The surgeries left Christian completely silent for eight months, Khosla said. But the final surgery was done last fall, and Christian has been undergoing voice therapy ever since. Khosla said learning again how to speak at full volume can be difficult and frustrating.
In recently shot videos, Christian's voice is still hoarse, but clearly audible, like someone getting over a cold. The voice, Christian said, is changing her outlook.
"My future is definitely brighter," Christian said. "Everyone is telling me to write a book."
The night of her fateful car wreck, Christian was out celebrating New Year's Eve with friends in Colorado, where she grew up. The driver had been drinking, she said, and ran into a telephone pole. The impact sent Christian lurching forward, her neck smacking against the dashboard.
"I don't remember pain, just panic when I tried to talk," Christian said of the accident. Christian told a local television station that she sounded like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" when she tested her voice.
After the crash, Christian's life went on, albeit in more hushed tones. She went to cosmetology school with a tracheal tube in her throat, which she wore scarves to cover. Scarves, she noted, were not considered stylish.
But lacking a voice didn't hamper her dating life. "Guys would say, 'Come closer, I can't hear you,' or my favorite, 'You sound sexy,'" she said.
At 21, Christian met her husband while out dancing. She has now been married to Randy Christian for 32 years, and says he is her greatest support and the love of her life. The couple joke about how her forced quiet has affected their marriage.
"My husband says he has almost the perfect wife," she said. "A woman that can't talk."
Source: Link.
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