I was a professional singer – but cancer took my voice box

Life before 2020 was normal for Tanja Bage, a fit and active working mother-of-two. But it was not a global pandemic that changed Bage’s life that year – instead a cancer diagnosis that stole her voice.

A professional singer and actress, Bage, from Leeds, has spent much of her adult life on the stage performing in theatre productions. Her voice was one of her greatest assets and a huge part of her identity.

Singing remains her passion, but she now performs without a voice box since hers was removed during treatment.

Bage had a total laryngectomy, which also repositioned her airway, after being diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma – cancer of the salivary glands – six years ago, when she was 38.

It came two years after her primary symptom, breathlessness, began.

Throughout her pregnancy with her second child, Bage noticed herself becoming short of breath and wheezing in a way that was noticeable to those around her.

She was given chest X-rays and her blood oxygen levels were normal. The breathlessness continued for the next two years as she desperately tried to get answers from doctors.

By this point, she was struggling to present work to colleagues at Asda and read to her young children, and her voice would be hoarse by the end of each day.

“By January 2020, I knew it wasn’t normal, but doctors still hadn’t worked out what it was, and I didn’t think it was cancer.

“I remember seeing my GP and he did all the usual observations. He said my blood pressure was fine, my chest sounded clear…but that time he said: ‘I’m going to listen to your neck’. He said he thought I had an upper airway obstruction”.