Hoarseness, shortness of breath, crackly/harsh voice, "lump in the throat" sensation, shooting pain from ear to ear, needing to breathe more deeply than usual. .. these are all symptoms that a lump can cause. A nodule is basically a small growth and looks like a bump on the vocal cords. This growth occurs due to vocal abuse, misuse, and overuse. A normal, healthy vocal fold often has smooth, white mucosal surfaces and no irregular objects on the vibrating edges. But when you abuse your vocal cords by putting force and tension on them, the vibrations go into "overload" and can cause too much friction on them. Eventually a type of bruise called a hematoma forms, and a layer of fibrous tissue forms into a soft or hard bump, AKA a lump. Two nodules usually form on each side of a vocal fold where the friction was extensive. Many may wonder if the nodules are cancerous, the answer is that they are not. They are simply growths that affect the voice. Treatment of these nodules is simply indicated. A specialist will first tell a person with a lump to rest their voice completely. Rest is only the first step and will not be enough to get rid of it. If you are a speaker we recommend speech therapy and if you are a singer get singing exercises from professional help. Surgery is the ultimate outcome and is very rare. It is rarely necessary and is only for extremely large nodules or if after six weeks of training and help no results have been achieved. This is primarily a problem for children aged 10 and under. It is known that there are some logical reasons why surgery is rarely recommended for them. Usually, if a child has a lump removed, it will most likely recur or return and there would have been no point in removing it in the first place. Another thing is that children abuse their voices much more often than adults. This is only because they scream and act out more often than adults ever would, which results in chances of seeing the lumps resolve by the time children reach puberty. For teenage girls who are becoming something like a cheerleader who has to constantly scream, future problems may occur. Schools rarely recommend speech therapy because it most often doesn't help.