You’re not alone in this.
Free resources and real stories for anyone facing cancer, laryngectomy or voice loss, and for the people who love them. Everything here comes from people who’ve lived it.
If you were just diagnosed, sitting up at three in the morning, we want you to know there’s a map. You are not the first, and you are not alone.
Three laryngectomees. One promise.
We’ve each lost our natural voice to cancer, and found our way back to living. We built this so you don’t have to find yours alone.
Survival
The decisions come fast and all at once: chemo, radiation, surgery. We put our attention on what our care team recommends, and we show up, one appointment at a time.
Strength
One day you wake up and say, I can do this. Slowly, our bodies become ours again.
Mental
When the urgency stops, everything we pushed aside is waiting. It is not a setback. Talk to your care team, and talk to other laryngectomees.
Education
We learn what’s out there, and we share what we’ve lived, so the next person doesn’t have to dig for it alone.
Survival
The decisions come fast and all at once. We put our attention on what our care team recommends, and we show up, one appointment at a time.
Strength
One day you wake up and say, I can do this. Slowly, our bodies become ours again.
Mental
When the urgency stops, everything we pushed aside is waiting. It is not a setback. Talk to your care team, and talk to other laryngectomees.
Education
We learn what’s out there, and we share what we’ve lived, so the next person doesn’t have to dig for it alone.
I was a talker. Then cancer took my voice.
I’ve always been a social guy. For forty years I worked as a musician and a video engineer on TV, film and concerts around the country, and I love telling the stories from those years.
So it hit hard in 2022, when I needed surgery to remove a cancerous mass on my vocal cords, and I lost my voice.
“I felt like I’d been given all these things, and they were being taken away.”
When I woke up from surgery, I didn’t expect to see a light at the end of the tunnel. At first I typed everything into a text-to-voice app on my phone. I tried the older devices too, and hated how buzzy and robotic they made me sound. I even started working out how to 3D print a mechanical voice box. I didn’t have to.
At Greater Baltimore Medical Center I became one of the first patients in the US fitted with the Ava Voice.
“They put me on it and I just started talking. I realized I could go back to work.”
At the end of that interview, after an hour of telling stories, I told the reporter, “Now I’m just rambling.” I’ll take it.
That second chance is why this hub exists. I want the next person who gets this diagnosis to find what took me so long to find, and to know they’re not alone.
Adapted from Ben’s interview with The Baltimore Banner (Meredith Cohn, December 2024). More about Ben →
Start wherever you are.
Plain, checkable resources, sorted the way you’ll actually need them.
In our own words.
Short films by laryngectomees and survivors, about the things nobody tells you.
Patients advocating for patients.
Flairies and Larys is a laryngectomee community run by three of us who’ve been through it: Andrea, Tracey and Ben. Nobody should have to face this feeling alone.
Meet Flairies and LarysPatients advocating for patients
This hub was built by patients, for patients. Everything here comes from people who have been through this themselves — our own experience, in our own words. Nobody should have to face it feeling alone, and that is the whole reason this place exists.
We always consult our own medical professionals when making decisions about our care, and we encourage you to do the same. What you find here is our opinion and our lived experience. It is not medical advice, and it is not a substitute for your own doctors and care team.