When you lose your voice, you hibernate at home. 

You don’t go out because you can’t communicate. You don’t understand that until it happens to you.1 Communication is the key to everything. If you can’t communicate, good luck. Can you imagine trying to do your job? Try going through a drive-thru and ordering a hamburger with an electric voice, a robotic voice. It doesn’t work. And calling people on the phone is worse — they just hang up on you. They think it’s a joke.2

I’ve talked to a lot of patients with laryngectomies.3 They actually give up on life. I knew I had to do something, because sitting at home and worrying only put me closer to the edge. I went to Cleveland Clinic, and when I met Dr. Strome, he said, “You’re just the guy I’m looking for. Where have you been?” Out of about 20 people, they picked me because I was a go-getter. I was determined.4

 

After his groundbreaking procedure, Timothy Heidler become a motivational speaker. 

Notes

  1. Timothy Heidler was riding to a firefighter training exercise on his dirt bike when he hit a cable someone had strung across the road between two trees, splitting open his neck. He was 21.
  2. After his accident, Heidler used an electrolarynx to speak, which made him sound like a robot.
  3. The surgical removal of the larynx, the portion of the throat that houses the vocal cords. 
  4. Heidler received the world’s first successful larynx transplant at Cleveland Clinic in 1998 at age 41. Three days after the operation performed by Marshall Strome, MD, Heidler said his first naturally articulated words in 20 years: “Hi, Mom.”