It is an unfortunate reality that a healing time must come after an illness or injury; there is simply no way to untie those two experiences. Sometimes the healing is relatively easy, only requiring extra rest and fluids, maybe several doses of ibuprofen. But there are times when the process of rehabilitation is extensive and exhausting, demanding physical and emotional strength we might not think we have.
Laura Williams experienced the latter kind of healing after an unexpected car accident in May 2018. She was on her way home from a health care appointment and was happy that her blood work had come back in good order. After stopping at a red light, she entered the intersection when the light turned green and was t-boned by a police cruiser. The result: shattered glass, smashed metal, and Laura’s body oddly contorted. “My right leg was pinned to the dashboard, and I could feel something not right in my neck,” she says. Of course, she was taken to the emergency room where she was informed that she had a fracture in her thoracic vertebrae T2-4.
An accident that took only moments led to months and months of treatment. Laura visited a neurologist and began injections in her knee and physical therapy. When after half a year those weren't effective, the doctor tried spinal injections. Six more months and no results, so Laura got a second opinion with University of Louisville neurosurgeon Dr. Alstadt. “After CAT scans and an MRI, he determined that I needed Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion,” she says, which meant a metal plate with screws in her neck to provide stability and eliminate pain.
The prospect of this surgery was, of course, scary, but even more so because the incision is made at the front of the neck and would affect Laura’s vocal cords. Laura had been a soloist at St. Paul United Methodist Church for over 20 years but what choice did she have? “I guess it’s in God’s hands,” she thought.
Laura visited various doctors and therapists to assess her voice prior to surgery in order to better determine steps afterwards, and the surgery itself went well. Still, Laura says, “I couldn’t sing for the first time in my life. What a feeling of disappointment and sadness. [I didn’t know] if I would ever speak or sing again. I went into surgery knowing this, but the reality set in and it was mind-blowing.”
Around eight months after surgery, having been diligent about her vocal therapy, Laura was feeling discouraged. After decades of faithful singing and camaraderie at St. Paul’s, she felt abandoned. “It was like, ‘If you can’t sing, we don’t need or want you,’” she says. In this bleak period, when Laura says she felt “two inches in height” and at her lowest level, a friend reminded her that Rebecca Russell went to school for voice therapy. Laura and Rebecca had known each other for a long time; they had sung together in Kentucky Opera, Bach Society, and St. Paul’s, but it had been several years since they had spoken. Laura made the call that day.
Rebecca agreed to not only help Laura work on restoring her singing voice, she invited Laura and her husband Bill to come to Jeffersontown Christian Church. They worked together and developed a trust that helped fuel Laura’s recovery, but Rebecca could make no promises to Laura. “I told her we were going to see what happens. It was an act of faith,” Rebecca says.
They spent weeks doing breathing exercises, practicing drills, and praying, and Laura began to strengthen and retrain her vocal cords. “I was beginning to hear a big difference in my breathing and placement of my vocal cords to where I wasn’t feeling any pressure or straining,” Laura says. An unexpected side effect of the therapy, though, was a deepening of the friendship between the two women. “Rebecca was the angel God sent me,” Laura says.
Laura recalls the day she and Bill first came to to choir practice at Jeffersontown Christian and being greeted with open arms: “I had a lump in my throat not because of my surgery, but because for the first time in almost a year I was in a choir and felt like I finally found a time to heal.”
Story by Carrie Vittitoe
