Surviving tobacco
Photo: S. Thanthoni
A. Sharfudeen.
An account of a smoker who managed to hold on to life, at the cost of his voice and more…
For the last 10 years, Sharfudeen has been apologising to people he speaks to for his accent. “I’m sorry I speak like a robot,” he says, “but I have a robot voice”.
He holds a small device, an electro larynx, pressed against his throat. The device picks up the vibrations of his vocal cords and converts them to sound. A metallic, robot-like sound.
Mr. Sharfudeen lost his vocal cords after doctors at the Adyar Cancer Institute performed a surgery to remove a mass of cancerous tumour in this throat. “At one point of time, it was either my throat or my life. It needn’t have been so bad, he adds, “if only I had not smoked my first cigarette.”
For 20 years after he picked up his first cigarette, Mr. Sharfudeen kept smoking, graduating to over a pack a day. And then, as he says it, “I had been having a sore throat for a while after over two decades of smoking. I took pills and felt fine for a while, but it did not solve the problem. One fine morning I woke up and had no voice.”
Doctors detected a growth in the throat and a biopsy revealed it was cancerous. The voice came back after radiation therapy. But only for a short while. It was soon obvious that surgery was his only chance at life.
He now has a tracheostomy (a hole in his throat through which he breathes) that cramps the speed at which he eats food, restricts the type of food he eats. He cannot smell, run or even have a shower and speaking on the phone is out. It took several months of practice to learn to use the electro larynx, before sounds became understandable words, he says. Still a lot of people are unable to understand him.
But he is now a convert, campaigning on awareness about tobacco use. Recently he has filed a public interest litigation in the High Court praying that cigarette packets must to list contents used in the cigarettes. “If a young man knows he is putting toilet cleaning acid into his mouth, I think he will stop smoking,” Mr. Sharfudeen says.
RAMYA KANNAN
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