Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Tunnel Singer

“Tunnel Singer”
RECORDED SCRIPT - 5/1/05
00:08:13 (with long music tag for soc-out)

Shoemaker:
I was injected on March the 4th, 2005. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long, round arch, with its path high above and is two ends apparently beyond the horizon" I will say "EEEEE"for a long time.
We mow our lawn all year. We eat apples and eggs. The puppy bit the tape..

NARR:
Lee Ellen Shoemaker isn't losing her mind.

Shoemaker:
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy, when skies are gray."

NARR:
She's losing her voice.

Shoemaker::
You'll never know dear, how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away."

NARR:
You just heard one of the vocal exercises Shoemaker records every day for her doctor. A few years ago, she came down with a rare neurological condition called spasmodic dysphonia..

Shoemaker:
I remember when this first happened ...The weird thing about it was that ...even though I couldn't speak, I could sing.
And I said, "Well, I can talk good enough, but if I couldn't sing, I don't know what I would do."

[MUSIC IN - Inner Runes, Tk. 1, "Inner Runes"]

NARR:
Shoemaker calls herself "The Tunnel Singer." She's what you might call acoustically obsessed. She spends a lot of time looking for echoey places to sing.

:
Shoemaker:
When I was very young, we had a coal bin in our cellar, that was empty, , and I loved to go down there and just make sounds,. And anytime I would be in a space where I could hear something different, I had to test it out.

I was on jury duty one time, and in the hall of justice, there were these long, marble halls...... in the parking garage near the hospital where I worked... a seven-story stairwell...

When I became unable to sing, it really, really was hard.
[MUSIC OUT]
I've tried so many alternative therapies.

NARR:
She tried voice rest, Hormonal supplements, Biofeedback. Nothing really worked - until finally Shoemaker went to a speech pathologist who correctly diagnosed her condition.

What actually happens is that the vocal cords go into involuntary spasms.

Shoemaker::
s the spasms will sometimes intensify...if I just do something to break the pattern, like "ha-ha-ha", if I laugh like that, my voice will come back. If I pat myself on the head, If I do weird things with my hands my voice will get strong again.
CG: I love that laughing makes your voice come back!
LS: Yeah...it's better than crying, right?

NARR:
The standard treatment for SD is Botox. It temporarily paralyzes muscles. For SD sufferers, when Botox is injected into the larynx it stops the spasms.

We're in the office of Dr. Mark Courey of the UCSF Medical Center.

Courey:
Now. I have to figure out how to get a slightly better view of your vocal cords.

NARR:
So picture the scene. Lee Ellen is sitting in a chair, kind of like a dental chair. Dr. Courey is holding a tiny camera mounted on a curved rod that's pointing down her throat. We can see an image of Shoemaker's larynx, and the pink tissue surrounding it, pulsing, projected onto a video screen. It's kind of weird, but also fascinating.

Courey:
You're going to lean forward, you're going to stick your tongue out, you're going to hold onto it for me, right here, and bring it forward, and I'm going to take this here.. [sound in bg]

NARR:
The next thing that happens is Dr, Courey takes a syringe that's filled with local anesthetic and drips it down Shoemaker's throat, onto her vocal folds.

MC: Say eeee.
LS: EEEE
MC: Say Ah.
LS: AHHH
MC: Say, We mow our lawn all year.
LS: WE MOW OUR LAWN ALL YEAR.

NARR:
It takes a few tries.

MC: We eat apples and eggs. (repeats)
Perfect.
[FADE UNDER NARR]

NARR:
Once she's numb, he then injects the botox with a long, curved needle. It's not an easy process, for either of them. At one point, I can hear Shoemaker sort of croaking, "Chocolate milkshake." So afterwards, I take her out for one.

[SOUND: DINER AMB]

Shoemaker:
You get the injection, you pass through a period of good voice, because the paralysis starts, but then you go past that point, and more and more gets more paralyzed, and then it starts coming back. Then you have a period, hopefully, of three to four months of good voice. And then the spasms start again.

[SOUND: TUNNEL RECORDING]
TUNNEL_1:
CG:
It's Saturday, the day after Lee Ellen's botox treatment, and we're up at the Marin Headlands tunnel, testing her voice.

Shoemaker::
We don't know if I'll regain my voice. But there is something so personally rewarding about being able to stand in the tunnel ... It's a very transformative experience for me. Being able to use my voice was always a huge part of how I saw myself.

CG:
Have you had dreams about singing since you became unable to?

LS:
Oh, absolutely. Yes. I sing a lot in my dreams. In fact, I can hit notes in my dreams I've never could hit when I was awake.

[Crossfade into MUSIC: INNER RUNES, TK. 9, "Woman Song"]

LS_9:
You know the funny thing is, when I dream that I'm singing, when I wake up, I don't feel at all disappointed. I feel like I actually did it, and it's that same feeling of peace and satisfaction.

[MUSIC UP AND OUT]

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