A friend of mine has been losing her voice for a long time now.

In her own words:

So my friend has seen TONS of doctors, had cameras inserted to her throat, has had MRI's, CAT scans, etc etc. Everything all came out normal.

She said her voice still comes and goes. Right now she's lost it again. She said eating fresh pineapple or screaming can sometimes bring it back. Other times it's simply a waiting game.

The majority of her doctors told her that it was psychological and nothing more. She never received any sort of diagnosis after all of these years.

Does this sound like neuropathy or some form of it?

Thank you for your help and I apologize if this is the wrong forum to post this in.

Peripheral Neuropathy is typically the term used for the nerves in the body. Any nerve can be damaged somehow, and therefore develop a neuropathy (nerve disease).

I'd post at Traumatic Brain Injury forum since this seems to involve head injury:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/fo...aysprune=&f=92

The nerve going to the larynx can be damaged from an injury,
infection, or thyroid tumor/nodule/goiter pressing on it, or from reflux from the stomach (GERD).

Lidocaine is an numbing agent. I don't see how numbing a muscle will make it work.

Here is an article about this:
http://www.healthscout.com/ency/68/647/main.html

Doesn't sound like something any of us PN'ers would be familiar with.
It isn't a typical nerve-death, type syndrome.
I think a good neurologist would be more qualified to answer
(along with a psych evaluation)

Alright, thank you Mrs. D. I'll post there to see if there's any ideas.

I thought it might be nerve damage as she has no other symptoms other than the voice coming and going

I agree with you on the Lidocaine. I didn't see how it could work, but apparently it was an experimental treatment option that seemed to work. She had said the other thing the doctor wanted to try was Botox--but as I said, I don't know how something that will numb or "freeze" the nerves would work.

I'll be sure to look into the provided links. Thank you again.

All the best.