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From:  "John Messmer, M.D." <jjm23@p...>
Date:  Mon Nov 5, 2001  11:27 pm
Subject:  RE: [vocalist] BIG tonsils Und Sound? ;)

If the archives are accessible, there has been much discussion on this
in the past. If your tonsils are as bad as you indicate, you will very
likely see improvement in your voice after you recover from surgery,
which could take a month or so. You have probably been compensating for
the lack of pharyngeal air space due to the large tonsils.

Be sure your surgeon and anesthesiologist are aware you are a singer.
Ask the surgeon to avoid moving your head around during surgery as the
endotracheal tube is more likely to bruise your vocal folds when your
head is moved around. Anesthesiologists as a rule are loathe to cause
any harm during intubation and since your voice is more sensitive to
minor trauma to the vocal folds than nonsingers, s/he will most likely
be willing to work with you on it and use as small a tube as possible
and keep your head still. Be aware also, it is the anesthesiologist's
job to keep you alive so s/he will need to protect your airway and there
may be a limit to what limits can be set.

John

John Messmer, M.D.
Assistant Professor, Family and Community Medicine
Penn State Hershey Medical Center



> My tonsilitis has indeed become chronic and
> thus the bloody pair will *have* to come out during the holidays...
> What I wonder is just how much has their state affected my sound
> overall and the ocassional difficulty of approaching the passaggio
> easily all through their (longtime) condition? When I asked the
> doctor if he saw my tonsils he said "They're hard to miss, there's
> really very little space between them" and this is the way they heve
> been for *some* time.




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