Dick Vitale is scheduled to return to ESPN on Wednesday night after missing two months to have vocal cord surgery. He’ll call the Duke-North Carolina with Mike Patrick and Stacey Dales on Wednesday and the Georgetown-Louisville game with Dan Shulman and Erin Andrews on Saturday.

Vitale told reporters Monday it was a frightening time for him when Dr. Steven Zeitels at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston told him he had ulcers on his left vocal cord and there was no way of knowing if they were cancerous until surgery was performed to remove them.

“You don’t think too much about basketball, you’re thinking about a lot of other things,� Vitale said. “I thought my career was over. I got another lease on life. That’s the way I call it because my heart and soul, obviously, is basketball.

“… It was a really scary time for me and my family and I’m so happy and thrilled that I’m going to get the opportunity to walk back into an arena because of my voice.�

Vitale said his throat and voice have been bothering him for the last two or three years. He also said his recovery from surgery was complicated and prolonged by a bladder infection.

ESPN will schedule Vitale judiciously; he will do the network’s prime Saturday games and most likely one other game during the week, avoiding overuse such as back-to-back games.

Vitale said he’s working with a voice coach now in an attempt to not just speak from his throat, but from his diaphragm as well.

“I need to let the microphone do more work for me,� he said. “They’ve given me a lot of tips and things (such as) to make certain when I’m in a restaurant and there’s a lot of voice, don’t try to talk over that noise. … I’ve got to be smart about it. I’ve got to be intelligent about it because I certainly don’t want to have these things reoccur.�

Vitale is often criticized for being too over the top, but it’ll be good to have him back as a “PTPer� once again.