Tomorrow morning I am finally going to see a specialist, about my dramatic hearing loss over the past year and hopefully find out what is going on with my voice.
For those of you who don't know I already suffered from a hearing loss, due to countless ruptured eardrums when I was a young child - I wrote about it a while ago here.
What a lot of you may not know is that in spite of this hearing loss, I pursued a career as a vocalist even studying music at tafe for a year - this was going to be my life I was sure of it.
Well then life actually happened I met 
I am not sure what I did exactly but it felt as though something snapped in my throat, I completely lost my voice and almost instantly my voice was reduced to a hoarse whisper - every word felt like razors I was in agony.
I was furious (with good cause) and I had lashed out, my family are yellers if we have an issue we yell it out, sort it out and move on - this time however I was not so lucky.
As a singer I once had a four octave range with pretty good control, but the thing I was most capable of was projection - I rarely needed a mic as I could just make myself heard as I pleased, this even made me consider my options with pursuing a career in opera.
So my voice was used to belting out a tune, in fact the way I taught myself to control my pitch with my hearing loss was by singing so loudly I could feel the notes in my throat - what vibrated when and where.
I was reliant on my ability to feel those notes to hit them, so when I tried to sing softly I would struggle to know if I was hitting the correct note.
Not that I could even try to sing at this stage the pain was too unbearable, but I figured I had strained my voice it just needed to rest and I had a six month old baby on my hands - so knowing I had done the damage myself, I figured it served my right and I should just let it heal on it's own.
I'm unsure how losing your voice like this would affect anyone else but for me it was like losing a limb, I had sung almost everyday of my life, singing made helped me control my emotions and moods, singing was my one major talent the one thing I was actually good at it built up my confidence in so many ways - without it I was broken I felt as though a part of me was missing.
But the next few years were an insane time in our little family's life, we moved to Brisbane away from anyone we knew, our baby girl contracted whooping cough on her first birthday and before my daughter was two we welcomed our son to join us.
By this time Katana had completely stopped communicating and we had been going through countless doctors to find out why, Katana was diagnosed with Autism at around three years of age - this is when our lives became all about therapy, doctors and research.
We enrolled Katana at AEIOU (an autism kindy) for full time early intervention therapy, it was less than a year later that our son Kai was also diagnosed with autism - we stepped it up again, converting our rental homes into therapy centers filled with all the equipment they could need.
But still years later I still had no voice, my theories about resting my voice were proving useless - so five years after I first lost my voice I really started to attempt to retrain my voice.
As I was driving the kids to and from school I would practice, at first I could only sing a phrase or two out of any song - but very slowly I started to be able to sing in a very very limited range.
The very moment I felt any pain I would stop, there was no way I was going to jeopardise my voice again - it took a but over a year but I eventually had back a lower two octave range, I couldn't hit any high notes and as I used to be able to pass as either an alto or a soprano my voice still felt inadequate.
I practiced everyday for as long as I dared, then every now and then I would have one day where I would be able to hit a larger range of notes but the next I'd be back to square one - as if nothing had happened.
One thing I did learn was to sing softer and not rely on feeling alone to ensure hitting the correct note, I was now forced to sing softly to reduce the impact singing had on my voice - I learnt to hear the subtle differences and began for the first time to be able to hear when I was off pitch.
This was almost worse than having no voice at all, after a while I had got into the habit of just not singing something I was so used to doing became a distant memory - but when I started to get my voice back, I was teased with promise and only given crumbs of success.
That is until a year ago finally after almost seven long years I had my voice back and most of my range (I was back to three octaves most days), I was happy and thought all was right with the world again.
I joined steemit in July last year (winter in Australia) and I became addicted immediately I spent all my free time on here and I spent countless nights glued to the computer and that's when I thought I had an amazing idea - I'd sing a song parody themed about steemit.
I had never released my music on the internet before and I had only just gotten my voice back so I was really nervous about putting it out there, but in true steemit style I decided to just give it a go anyway.
Here is the video of that song, I just rewatched it and it made me cringe to hear it - this is at around two in the morning, I had only heard the song a few times before deciding to do this and you can see the struggle on my face from the very beginning.
But if you can manage to listen to the end you can see some of what I am capable of, but you can also hear breaks in my voice.
By this stage of the song I realised my voice was about to give out but I wanted to try and at least finish the song, just as the song is about to finish I actually miss a line from the song and I'm swallowing in pain - in hindsight I should have just stopped then and there.
If you managed to listen to this, I don't share it to brag honestly it is a bit embarrassing - but it clearly shows the damage to my voice and the obvious struggle to control it.
The next morning when I woke up I had completely lost my voice again, I couldn't even speak all communications were reduced to a whisper - the combinations of late nights and straining my voice had resulted in a terrible chest infection.
Little did I know the true extent of the damage, I had a persistant cough for over six straight months - I couldn't speak at all for over a month, when my speaking voice came back it would fade again and I had absolutely no ability to sing again.
I had undone everything that had taken me years to reclaim and all because I pushed my voice at the wrong time, I knew better than this and I was and still am infuriated with myself for causing more issues again.
I have never had the same cold for six months before, I was so sick and nothing was making me any better even in the warmer months I still had my winter cold - this is also when my significant hearing loss really stepped into action.
I felt as though my head was now permanently submerged in water, everything sounded as if it was muffled and distorted and insanely quiet.
It was six months before I could sing again and as a true steemian, I had been dying to enter the open mic contest - I learned about it after my voice was gone and I was devastated that I couldn't participate.
My first ever entry into the open mic contest was an acappella version of In The Arms Of The Angel by Sarah McLachlan, if you listened to the first recording nows the time to compare the quality of my voice.
I have a lot more of my higher range available but if you listen carefully you can still hear slight cracks and breaks in my voice, but I have more of my control back and being able to hit some high notes makes me feel as though I can finally breath again.
My full range still alludes me, but bit by bit I work to regain all that I have lost - but I have also gained a greater understanding of pitch and key, so as my voice does return I have greater control abilities.
Though again after posting this my voice disappeared for another week or two, but eventually it came good on Australia Day so I decided to give my rendition of Waltzing Matilda.
In my opinion this is probably the best example I have of my voice working, I wasn't showing off too much range but the power was back and more control again - I started to feel human again.
To this day my voice comes and goes, though in general it is doing a lot better than it used to - most days I can sing it's just whether or not I will have any range, or if my voice will break.
This makes participating in the singing competition very difficult, plus with my hearing at its worst levels ever I still feel broken - I can't hear my kids speaking a lot of the time and it makes life difficult.
Honestly one of the hardest things has been to realise how much and well my kids respond to music and to know this is my wheelhouse, but to be unable to even sing a nursery rhyme with them is depressing to say the least.
But after all of this turmoil and having struggled alone with this for going on eight years now, I finally have an appointment to find out what is going on with both my hearing and my throat.
I am so nervous that I will either have permanent damage to my voice and that there won't be anything they are able to do to fix it, I just have no idea what happened every doctor I have seen just looks at it and say everything looks fine only checking the surface - refusing to refer me to an ENT (ear nose throat Dr).
I want some solutions to help me regain my voice and prevent me from having this happen again, I would also love a solution for my hearing that doesn't involve surgery or hearing aids - I recently got a new hearing aid, but it is bulky and uses pressure on the nerve to work and gets quiet painful after a while.
I have so many questions that I hope to get answered in the morning, this could be setting me on the path to a final recovery - I am just so nervous that they won't be able to do anything for either my hearing loss or my voice.
Tomorrow is a day I have been waiting for over eight years, I have hope and fear heading into this - I just don't know what to expect and to me so much is reliant on this appointment going well.
Only time will tell, but this year has been one of big changes for the better - I just hope that trend continues with this appointment.
What is something that if you lost it, you would feel incomplete?
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