With regards to work I need my speech due to the fact that I am a stammering therapist; basically helping people who have a stammer to achieve fluency. I also work on other projects to do with enabling people to learn to play the guitar and about web promotion. My voice is an important part of all these.

I started to “lose my voice” after having a rather bad bout of flu. At the outset I was not that annoyed with the overall situation as my doctor had been kind enough to sign me off work for a week. I just presumed that my speech would resume to normal after a couple of days and that all would be fine etc.

Unfortunately this was not the case and after around ten days my voice was still extremely hoarse. I had finished the course of penicillin, I had taken paracetamol and had been drinking plenty of fluids as the doctor had advised yet I was still unable to talk in my normal natural way. I did not want to panic, I did not want to over react but there was this nagging thought at the back of my mind that maybe something was seriously wrong with me – throat cancer perhaps. You may be thinking that I am slightly crazy or even very crazy! This was the way that I was starting to think however.

After reading numerous pieces of advice on the internet I decided that what I really needed to do was to rest my voice box in a major way. This was the only thing that I had yet to do. The websites had advised to stop smoking – I did not smoke, they advised to drink regular fluids and to eat healthily – I had done this. They also recommended that people should rest their voice box almost completely – I had not done this mainly due to the fact that I have a rather busy and hectic life.

I am pleased to report that this period of solid rest did prove to be successful and that I am now back to full strength.