Disabled Community Megathread from November 17, 2025 to November 30, 2025
I have always been fond of music, especially when I'm feeling down. Now, I don't think there's enough popular songs about disability and how we struggle each day. But I stumbled across a song the other day that, while it's not about disability, I've been listening to quite often when I feel like I failed somehow. When all that's happening is really just me struggling and making it through another day, for better or for worse, I like to remind myself that I am perfectly incomplete, but I am good the way I am. I hope that maybe it helps you too.
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179 comments
I got my gynaecology referral letter today, I had to phone the number to make an appointment. There was an echo on the line, everything I said was being echoed back to me and oh my god, I can't believe how awful my voice sounds. I didn't know it was that bad. When I'm speaking I hear my voice as being quite deep and accentless, but echoed back it sounded like a high pitched child's voice with a cockney accent. I don't even live in London so why do I sound like a cockney?
Anyway apparently NHS waiting lists are so long now that the local private hospital is taking NHS patients. However the private hospital is allowed to pick and choose which patients it will take. If I can go to the private hospital I will get seen quicker, get my own private room, better food etc. So they've put me forward for that but I will have to wait and see if the private hospital accepts me. If not I'll have to be redirected back through the NHS waiting list.
I hate hearing my own voice too, it always make me cringe and sounds an octave higher than I imagine. I'm sure it's not as bad as we perceive it, though.
That'd be nice to get 'picked' at the nicer facility! Writing that felt weird...healthcare with sports terminology feels so dystopian. Either way, hope you hear back soon and it gets you on your way to getting the fibroid issues treated.
It is dystopian, especially the fact that the private hospital can just pick and choose whichever NHS patients they will take. But thank you, I hope it gets sorted soon too. They've made me a provisional appointment for new years eve for the consultation but the private hospital can decide against me and cancel it if they want.
I really hope they'll take care of you and don't just shove you off onto another waiting list. Keeping my fingers crossed for you
As to how hearing your voice made you feel - your voice will always sound deeper to you than it does to others. You're closer to it, and you hear the vibration from inside the body as much as the sound that leaves your mouth. That does not mean you have a high pitched voice, but an echo or a recording of your voice will always sound higher pitched. Don't worry about it, I don't think people think your voice is a high pitched child's voice. As to the accent, have you maybe listened to a podcast or watched a show or something similar that had a lot of people speak with a cockney accent? That might influence your speech patterns. Long story short, there's nothing wrong with having a cockney accent or a higher pitched voice than you thought you had.
Thanks, I really hope I get to go to the private hospital as well, I actually had my thyroidectomy done there (because my employer at the time had given the employees private healthcare benefits) and it was so much nicer than the NHS one. That's probably the only reason my thyroid cancer got diagnosed actually, I'd been begging the NHS for help with my symptoms for 3.5 years at that point and they just kept fobbing me off. Then my employer gave us private health insurance and I told my GP I had private health insurance now and he sent me there for some proper tests.
I actually lived in London as a child, decades ago but moved to Devon as a schoolchild in the 90s. But that was so long ago and I don't sound cockney in my head at all, I had no idea I still sound like that. In fact it was so long ago I mostly forget I started life in London, it seems like another lifetime ago. I just sounded like such a child too, it was embarrassing.
Well, if you've already made good experiences with this hospital, I sincerely hope they take care of you again and will help you too. I'm glad your last employer was this generous with healthcare, who knows what would've happened otherwise. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you sweetheart
I've been working with languages and how it's affected by the things happening around and to you in my studies, what I can tell you on a purely academic note is that the environment that you grew up in and learned to speak in will always color the way you speak. While you say you've gone to school somewhere else, it's entirely possible that your pre-school years left a big impression on your speech center, and so this is naturally how you talk. It's not impossible to unlearn speech patterns/dialects/accents, but it takes training and sometimes, especially when we're not feeling good, old habits break through. (Anecdotal side note: I usually sound pretty well-educated in my native tongue, but when I get agitated or very tired, I tend to slip into a more vulgar kind of dialect that I grew up with. I can control it, mostly, but it takes a lot of effort, and it's eventually how people know which region I come from.)
Thanks.
It was a shock at first but as the days go on I am getting resigned to sounding like a cockney. However I do wonder if this is part of the reason why I've struggled to be taken seriously by the medical profession so many times. All this time during the consultations I thought I was at least presenting as the same class as the doctors even if I'm actually poor but the whole time they've probably been seeing me as lower class and applying class bias, plus of course the fact that female patients don't get taken seriously anyway, all of this probably combined to me being brushed off for so long whenever I have a medical issue.
Any time
That is unfortunately very likely :/ British class bias is fucked up, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was playing into the poor treatment you received. The solution shouldn't be that you try to change how you speak, though. You deserve fair treatment, no matter where you're from or what accent/dialect you are speaking.
I think it would be impossible to change the way I speak anyway, since I can't even hear I'm doing it until I hear it coming from outside. But thanks, we live in such a messed up world where the help you receive depends on your class, accent, gender, etc.