Woman spends 12 years without speaking and suddenly regains her voice

Marie McCreadie went through years that seemed more like a nightmare. At the age of 12, the British woman moved to Australia with her family and suddenly lost her voice. Today, more than 40 years later, she tells her story in the book Voiceless – Without voicein free translation -, released that year.

In the 70s, Marie and her family had to leave UK to go to Australia. The adjustment period was uneventful until one day, late in the summer, she woke up with a severe sore throat. “In the first week, the irritation (of the throat) was very intense because of the fever. But when the temperature went down, the infection disappeared and I started to feel better and ‘normal’… but after about six weeks, my voice didn’t come back”, she told BBC🇧🇷

She couldn’t make another sound, not a hoarse voice, not even a cough. Time passed and the doctors could not get any conclusive diagnosis about her case. At first they diagnosed laryngitis and then they said it was a hysterical dumbness, described as a vocal function disorder without changes in the body, which would result in voluntary silence. Of course, she wasn’t happy with the result. “I couldn’t book a haircut or make a doctor’s appointment. If I was in trouble or had an accident, I couldn’t scream either,” she said.

Marie studied at a Catholic school, and within a year she was forced to join the school choir. When she realized that she couldn’t speak and that there was no physical explanation for this, a teacher said that God was punishing her and that was why she had lost her voice. 🇧🇷My classmates started to believe what they said, that I was being punished and I had to confess my sins to get my voice back. I refused because I had nothing to confess. Girls used to call me a devil’s wife and other jokes like that, but over time it stopped being a joke. It was severe, extreme. As I refused to confess sins, they wouldn’t let me enter the church and go to the mass we attended every Friday, so I had to stay outside”, he reports.

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After two years without a voice, she was so depressed that she tried to kill herself and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where she went through several traumatic experiences. Marie had to undergo electrical shock therapy sessions. She ran away and went to live with a friend. “I didn’t want to see anyone, the little trust I had in people disappeared in the hospital. I isolated myself for six months and, as I didn’t believe I would get my voice back, I started to rebuild my life, ”she said.

She went on to work at the family cafe until one day, when she was 25, she started to feel really bad. “I started coughing and blood started coming out of my mouth. I thought I was dying. I could feel something moving in the back of my throat. At one point I thought I was coughing up my insides,” she reported.

When she arrived at the hospital, doctors saw that she had an object stuck in her throat and managed to extract it. The coin had been stuck since the 1960s and prevented the vocal cords from vibrating and making sounds. From the moment she was extracted, Marie started talking again. She had to relearn how to breathe and moderate her voice, but soon her life was back to normal. Today, she keeps the coin in a bracelet she wears all the time.

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