For those with throat cancer, treatment can involve having a laryngectomy, where a person’s voicebox is removed, leaving the person unable to speak without holding their fingers to their neck. This moves air down into the oesophagus, causing vibrations which can be turned into speech by the person moving their mouth and lips as they would when speaking normally. It takes a lot of effort to do this, so joining a choir after this kind of operation might seem unlikely. But with the help of a charity called Shout at Cancer, a group of cancer survivors is doing just that, and as Mandeep Rai reports from a rehearsal in London, this is giving them confidence as well as a voice.
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