Hoarseness, shortness of breath, irritated/hoarse voice, feeling of a “lump in your throat”, shooting pain from ear to ear, need to breathe in deeper than usually... these are all symptoms that a nodule can cause. A nodule is essentially a small growth and looks like a bump on your vocal cords. This growth results from vocal abuse, misuse, and overuse. A healthy, normal vocal fold often has smooth, white mucosal surfaces and does not have any irregular objects on its vibrating borders. But when you overuse your vocal cords by applying force and tension to them, the vibrations turn into “overload” and can cause too much friction on them. Eventually, a type of bruise forms called a hematoma and a layer of fibrous tissue forms into a soft or hard bump, AKA a nodule. Usually, two nodules form on either side of a vocal cord where friction is high. Many may wonder if the nodules are cancerous, the answer is that they are not. These are simply growths that affect the voice. The treatment of these nodules is simply stated. A specialist will first tell a person with a nodule to rest their voice completely. Rest is only the first step and it won't be enough to eliminate them. If you are a speaker, speech therapy is recommended and if you are a singer, receive singing exercises with the help of a professional. Surgery is the latter outcome and is very rare. This is rarely necessary and only applies to extremely large nodules or if six weeks of training and help have yielded no results. This is primarily a problem for children aged 10 or younger. There are logical reasons why surgery is rarely recommended in their cases. Usually, if a nodule is removed in a child, it will most likely reappear or reappear and there would have been no point in removing it in the first place. Another thing is that children abuse their voice much more often than adults. This is simply because they scream and carry on more often than adults, leading to the possibility of the nodules resolving by the time children reach puberty. For teenage girls who become something of a cheerleader who constantly has to shout, future problems may arise. Schools rarely recommend speech therapy because it most often does not help.