98.5 The Sports Hub morning man Fred Toucher has been speaking with a noticeable raspiness recently, and has missed time to rest his voice. Last week, co-host Rich Shertenlieb shared on the station’s website that Toucher — like the show’s loyal listeners — wants answers to when he’ll be back to normal, but couldn’t give them.
Monday morning, Toucher joked that the show’s producer Mike Lockhart had made him uneasy about his voice by asking a simple question.
“Mike just freaked me out. He asked me if he thought my voice would sound like this forever,” Toucher said. “I’m like ‘Oh god’. He asked if any of the doctors were concerned. They didn’t seem overly concerned, They didn’t say ‘Come back tomorrow’. They said come back in six weeks.”
“Mike should know better than that,” Rich Shertenlieb joked. “Now you’re only going to think about that for the next eight weeks.”
Shertenlieb asked Toucher about his mindset and what throat physical therapy entailed. Toucher shared that he has certainly considered the long-term ramifications if he can’t return his voice to normal.
“I mean, it has occurred to me. Is my career over if I continue to talk like this? But when your throat has been messed up long enough, you learn to speak in a different way to compensate for it. What I’m hoping is these bacterial pills do something and that helps the most,” Toucher continued. “I had these lozenges before and the doctors were like ‘Why were you on those?’. So, great, I wasted all the time on the lozenges. I am no longer on steroids. My throat is infected, and all the stuff around it is cobblestones. It doesn’t hurt. Not at all. And that’s why they’re not concerned. Because it doesn’t hurt.”
