A young woman who was born with paralysed vocal cords is fighting to save her voice by reaching out to her thousands of followers on TikTok to find a cure.
Poppy Beech, 23, has always had a low, husky voice and says teachers used to tell her to “lay off the cigarettes” when she answered the register at school.
She was only diagnosed with the rare condition of vocal cord paralysis aged 16 after her parents became concerned and took her to the GP.
Poppy, 23, who works in digital marketing for a furniture company, now fears she will lose her voice completely if a cure is not found.
To help her in her quest, Poppy launched a TikTok page showing videos of the challenges she faces while shopping and even ordering in restaurants.
Since posting her first 'Poppy Speaks Out' video on TikTok she has attracted more than 150,000 followers worldwide.
Poppy Beech, 23, has always had a low, husky voice and says teachers used to tell her to “lay off the cigarettes” when she answered the register at school.
She was only diagnosed with the rare condition of vocal cord paralysis aged 16 after her parents became concerned and took her to the GP.
Poppy, 23, who works in digital marketing for a furniture company, now fears she will lose her voice completely if a cure is not found.
To help her in her quest, Poppy launched a TikTok page showing videos of the challenges she faces while shopping and even ordering in restaurants.
Since posting her first 'Poppy Speaks Out' video on TikTok she has attracted more than 150,000 followers worldwide.
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FunTranscript
00:00Hello, I'm Poppy and I'm documenting my life with a paralyzed vocal cord.
00:09My name's Poppy Beach. I was born with a right-sided vocal cord paralysis.
00:14I didn't know anything was wrong with my voice until I went to secondary school
00:19and the teachers started to be quite nasty and pick me out in front of everyone
00:24and ask why I was different. So at 16 I got diagnosed with vocal cord palsy
00:29which essentially means that the right side of my vocal cord is paralyzed open
00:34giving me a very husky and breathy voice. I had quite a few courses of speech and language therapy
00:41to improve my current vocal cord and I've had surgery three years ago
00:47which was a silicone injection into my right vocal cord but that was unsuccessful
00:54so this year they want to do two more surgeries.
00:58It's quite a long process. There's not really a kind of, this is the surgery we have and it will be fixed.
01:04It's trial and error to see whether your vocal cords will adapt to having the implant
01:09and kind of create a new vibration and create a new sound.
01:13I was quite happy just to stay like this. I've just always been known as quite quiet
01:18but we want to try and improve my voice for as much as possible for the rest of my life to carry on talking.
01:26Day to day it's fine really. I don't have any trouble swallowing, eating, breathing.
01:33I regularly enjoy exercise, horse riding, running, hiking.
01:39But I know some people with vocal cord paralysis do struggle with their breathing.
01:45I think because I was born like this rather than having an injury to cause this
01:50I've adapted to it quite well and for me it's just like anybody else.
01:54I just struggle with creating sound.
01:58So in busy places or restaurants or bars I will struggle to be heard.
02:04Probably when you're out with your friends, even in a restaurant it's really hard to project my voice.
02:10I'm really straining and after that my voice will be quite weak and I feel like I've got a sore throat.
02:18So being able to have the opportunity to like project my voice and just be like a normal sounding person
02:24is what hopefully is going to happen.
02:27Yeah so I started to create TikToks just to raise awareness of the condition.
02:32It's quite rare but since posting my videos I've actually found like hundreds of people that have also got it.
02:39Because a lot of the time people are quite judgy on why I sound like this.
02:44So raising awareness of these kind of vocal conditions might make people think
02:48oh actually before I judge on why she sounds like that it could be something else.
02:54The doctors don't really know too much about vocal cord paralysis.
02:58So having kind of the research done to give us better surgery and results is what I'm trying to raise awareness about.
03:05Yeah it's a bit weird. I've obviously had this all my life and then only recently have I decided to actually talk about it.
03:12Most of the time if somebody asks depending on what mood I'm in I'm either just like yeah I'm just not feeling very well or I'll explain to them.
03:19But there's a lot of questions people have when you start explaining.
03:24I've had so many comments and people are also like me that are happy that I'm doing it.
03:28Because there's not really anybody else out there that's talking about this condition.
03:32Most commonly asked question is oh you're not feeling very well or oh god you had a rough night or something to do with like how I am.
03:43So most of the time people just think I've got a sore throat or I'm losing my voice which is what it sounds like.
03:49And sometimes they are just generally inquiring to see them like this but sometimes they are quite nasty about the situation.
03:58Thank you very much.
03:59Thank you very much.