Donna Lambers, a maternal/fetal medicine specialist, describes the impact on her medical practice and sense of self when her vocal cords are affected by a thyroidectomy for thyroid cancer. She loses the ability to control vocal inflection. “For instance,” she writes, “I’m unable to raise my voice at the end of a question… I can no longer tease or kid or be sarcastic with my family and friends, because it comes off sounding mean. My voice, having lost its cadences, is unpleasant to hear; and now, when giving perinatal counseling to my patients, I have no way to convey the empathy and emotion I feel for them…” She describes with great insight the many ways this has affected her interactions with patients, their families, and co-workers, as well as the frustrations she experiences.
The story could open up a discussion about the ways in which effective communication requires more than simply clear transmission of information and the taken-for-granted ways that we construct relationships and enact identities through subtle cues. It also speaks to the challenges of this particular non-visible disability.
Access
- Link: https://pulsevoices.org/stories/silenced/
Details
Language: English
Type of Story: Brief story
Medium: written
Contributed by: Daena Goldsmith ( daena@lclark.edu )
Citation:
Lambers, D. (2024, January 16). Silenced. Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. https://pulsevoices.org/stories/silenced/