Trending:
Kimberly Williams-Paisley shared more details about her “weird, mysterious health scare” which caused the actress to lose her voice for nearly two years, while doctors struggled to diagnose what happened.
Williams-Paisley, 53, told Today host Craig Melvin on Monday’s March 24 episode that it all started two years ago when she was hosting a benefit in Nashville.
“I open my mouth to welcome everybody and nothing came out,” The Father of the Bride alum said. “I had like, just nothing. My throat was completely clenched.”
She shared that in the past, she would occasionally lose her voice from time to time. “If I got sick, my voice was the first thing to go.” However, this was “the first time it completely went.” The morning after the benefit, she still “couldn’t really talk,” Williams-Paisley continued.
Williams-Paisley explained that it took “a year and a half of me trying everything to try to figure this out” before her condition was finally diagnosed: “I had paralysis in one of my vocal cords.” As the Mayo Clinic explains, the vocal cords need to “come together and vibrate to make sound.”
She shared that doctors were able to “plump up my vocal cords so that they could touch again” — using filler, prompting her to joke, “I look 20 years younger on the inside.”
The actress previously told PEOPLE: “I felt trapped in my own body.” She admitted she was struggling with the condition, which may have been caused by a virus.
She now has a permanent implant, which has corrected her paralysis. “I feel great,” Paisley-Williams said on Monday.
She is also back to work as the host of the hit FOX dating show Farmer Wants a Wife. “It was so nice to go back to work after a long time of thinking, like, when you’re in the middle of a weird, mysterious kind of health scare, it can feel like it’s going to go on forever, and so I’m just so relieved that it’s not.”
“I’m on the other side of it,” she continued. “I’m stronger, I understand my body more. I came out the other side.”
She shared that her husband, Brad Paisley, poked fun at her condition at Christmas, gifting her a megaphone. It’s a gag gift that Williams-Paisley uses to her advantage. “You got to get those kids downstairs for school and stuff. Isn’t that romantic?”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Williams-Paisley and her husband share sons William “Huck”, 17, and Jasper, 15.
Read the full article here
