For crying out loud
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| Gore-Tex, the material used in your favorite outdoor gear, gave back Peggy Rains her singing voice. |
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By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer
4/21/2007
Surgery and a lot of prayers restored Peggy Rains' voice
In just a few years, Peggy Rains' sweet western swing voice had already received a string of accolades.
Since starting to sing professionally in 1999, the Pryor singer won the Will Rogers Award for western swing female vocalist of the year in 2000 from the Academy of Western Artists.
Rains went on to win the Spot Music Award in 2002 for best country act. She put out three albums and a duet with country recording artist David Frizzell. She even opened for George Jones at a Muskogee concert in 2002.
Her career grew out of a gift recording-session her husband, a dentist, bought for her in Nashville.
But it looked as if the awards and the accolades and Rains' entire singing career would all end, when her voice first acted up back in October 2003 during a show in Ruidoso, N.M.
"I couldn't keep pitch," said Rains in an interview following lunch at Tulsa's Savoy diner. "I would hit a note and it would just go everywhere if I really came at it like I sing."
Her voice started sounding like that of a junior high school boy in the grip of puberty, she said. She started looking for a doctor and cutting back on her singing.
After a battery of tests, a doctor diagnosed a condition that was a mouthful to remember: unilateral vocal fold paresis of an idiopathic nature.
That's medical speak for a permanently paralyzed vocal chord. Doctors couldn't be sure what caused the paralysis, only that it was likely the result of an infection, she said.
"By May I had lost my speaking voice completely, and that is a life-altering experience," said Rains, who seems quick to laugh about it now.
She was overwhelmed, depressed and for one brief morning, she threw herself a "self-pity party." Her clear, strong, expressive voice was reduced to a forced, breathless whisper.
"I tried to avoid saying anything. I never answered the phone. We would be at a party and I would want to interject something and I would be pulling on my husband saying, 'Say this!' "
She sought the help of a Nashville doctor who had helped a myriad of singers with voice problems.
"He comes through and says, 'You don't do this for a living do you?,' " she said, describing her visit with the doctor. "And I'm like, 'Well, no but . . .' There was no 'but.' This isn't gonna happen."
A letter from the Nashville doctor won her a fight with her health insurance, which claimed the condition was the result of her singing.
She learned she had two options: Either get botox injections into her voicebox every six months or choose surgery and the help of a strip of GORE-TEX.
Not enamoured with needles, she opted for the surgery. Doctors in November inserted a strip of the synthetic material better known for its use in making waterproof clothing into her voicebox.
"What they can do is make it to where the good vocal chord works from the bad one, put the bad one in place and make it stable. And the good vocal chord can work from it," Rains said.
After the surgery, but while still on the operating table, doctors asked Rains to speak. A shadow of her old voice emerged for the first time in months.
Then came work with a speech therapist. It took until 2006 and a performance at the Port of Catoosa before Rains had regained enough confidence to do a full show herself.
All she wanted was to be able to speak, but now she's got her singing voice back.
"Now, call it what you want, I'm gonna call it a miracle. I've been blessed, because I shouldn't be able to do what I did before. And I don't think there's anyone who can tell the difference now."
Rains, who works at her husband's Pryor dental clinic, expects to return to recording this summer, picking up the acoustic gospel album she tabled when her voice failed. She'll head to Nashville around June or July to record it, she said.
She has been reluctant to talk about her ordeal.
"I don't wanna use it for anything other than what it is. It happened to me. I've been able to overcome with a lot of prayers."
Matt Elliott 581-8366
matt.elliott@tulsaworld.com
By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer
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