Imagine losing your voice and not knowing if you would ever get it back. It’s something one Saskatoon man wouldn’t wish upon anyone and is now helping others through the same ordeal.
Brian Button says in terms of symptoms there was only one, everything he did left him winded.
“I was always short of breath for about five before, five to six years.”
Doctors ran a battery of tests then on April 3, 2015, Button says he picked up a phone and nothing came out.
His voice was completely gone but for a whisper.
“You don’t even know how much you take it for granted until you lose it.”
He was now truly suffering in silence, communicating was what Brian did for a living.
“I thought my life was over,” said Button
“I made a living as a parts technician so I’m talking people eight or 10 hours a day – how do you sell parts if you can’t talk?”
On May 11 of that year, he required an emergency tracheotomy after doctors confirmed his airways were 90 per cent compromised and without it he would die in a matter of days.
“I had two cancers in my throat, not one.”
The two cancers were wrapped up as one golf-ball sized tumour said Button. His cancer was so rare it represented less than one per cent of laryngeal tumours.
According to the Canadian Cancer Society, the main goal of surgery for laryngeal cancer is to completely remove the cancer while saving as much function of the larynx (speaking, swallowing and breathing) as possible – for Brian this wasn’t possible.
“My larynx went and part of a my trachea as well.”
“This surgery changed me, it changed me 100 per cent.” Button added
“I have a very positive aspect on life now, I have to because I’m going to beat it.”
He is also paying it forward and has mentored nearly half a dozen patients through similar procedures in Saskatchewan, talking them through their health crisis with a voice he never thought would return.
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