Man grateful to speak again after larynx transplant

By Mike Sullivan

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    NEWBURYPORT, Massachusetts (WBZ) — A Haverhill man spent a decade barely able to speak following a partial laryngectomy to battle cancer. He can now speak thanks to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. He became just the third person in the U.S. to receive a larynx transplant, and the first active cancer patient to do so.

“When I had my voice back, the first call I made was to my mother. She is 82 years old, a bit deaf, and she could hear every word I said,” said Marty Kedian.

Kedian says he spent about 10 years with just a faint voice, and six months with no voice at all.

“If you were right up in front of him, you could hear him, but the distance we are? You couldn’t hear him,” said Marty’s son Robert Kedian.

“I tried sign language, but I don’t know it, so it all came out as gibberish,” added Marty.

“I would say, ‘what?’ 100 times because I just couldn’t understand what he was trying to say,” said Marty’s wife Gina DeFeudis.

A year in Arizona waiting for transplant

Marty and Gina spent a year living in Arizona. The couple had to leave their family in Massachusetts to remain on standby for a possible transplant. They thought they had a donor ready, but it turned out to not be a viable match. They got another call on February 28.

“Eleven o’clock they said, ‘OK, we are rolling him in.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, this is happening?” remembers Gina.

Surgery lasted 23 hours

Kedian was in surgery for 23 hours as doctors removed his larynx, voice box, thyroids, and pharynx, replacing them with those of an anonymous donor. He says doctors didn’t think he would speak for nine months, but he spoke to his wife right after surgery.

“I believe he just said, ‘Hello,’ because he wasn’t supposed to speak right away,” said Gina. “He is a bit of a rule breaker. They were glad he got that out, then said, ‘No more.’ Which really didn’t stop him.”

“When I lost my voice, it was devastating, I didn’t think I was going to get it back,” said Marty.

He says the voice you hear now is “60% of me.”

“To be able to pick up the phone and call him, and have a conversation with him, and to hear his voice, which I haven’t been able to do in a decade, is out of this world,” said Robert. “He is going to share his story. He wants as many people to know about this as possible.”

Marty met his friends and family at a homecoming in Newburyport. Some of his pals were in tears listening to him speak for the first time.

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