February 24, 2010

• My new odyssey

  

  For the past couple of months I have been struggling with some kind of illness.  I’m not complaining here, it’s just a fact.  Everyone around me is having the same issues.  We have some friends with ten kids and they are on their second round of pneumonia.  Another family near here with a newborn just sprung the baby from the hospital after a bout of RSV and now their five-year-old is in with severe dehydration from the stomach bug.  This certainly has been a year of illness and it isn’t confined to Upstate New York by any means.  I have a neice in South Carolina who is having her own health issues and another is New Jersey that is suffering too.  No, I am not the only one, by any stretch of the imagination who is having a hard time getting healthy this winter. 

  I think we will chalk this one up to the most varied and prolonged illness on record.  That’s what the winter of 2009-2010 is going to be known for.  It started out with your basic cold which went away with it’s usual reluctance.  No problem, I can do colds.  Then on into the usual round of coughs, sneezes, and wheezes.  Okay, that’s not so bad.  We’ll just push the fluids and go to be a bit earlier a few nights and we can get that one licked too.  Only that didn’t do it.  From coughs and sneezes it went into downright not being able to breathe, something that I personally treasure, and laryngitis.  From there we progressed into coughs that rocked the bed at night, I kid you not, and wheezes that others could hear from their rooms with the door closed.  Okay, enough is enough, time to see the dr.  Only I never got to the dr.  The wheezes were so bad I was detoured to the ER. 

  Well, enough of that story, the breathing is better, the coughs are gone.  The wheezes are a thing of the past, thank God!!!! The steroids are over and so are the antibiotics and the nebulizer has been put away.  But the voice is gone.  That’s right, the voice is gone.  Not a whisper, not a croak, not a breath.  It is gone.  My dreams of singing opera are shot.  Actually I have never dreamed of singing opera so that’s not a problem.  But singing is out of the question too and my husband has actually said he is starting to miss my singing, what a sweet man!

  Long story short, an Ear/Nose/Throat consult seemed to be in order so off to the ENT I went.  He determined that there is some damage to my vocal chords.  But the worse thing is that all of the coughing, sneezing, and wheezing and refluxing that I did through all that illness has left my vocal chords red and inflamed and the muscles around them doing their valient best to protect them from further damage.  The treatment, six weeks of COMPLETE vocal rest.  That’s right folks not only cannot talk, now I must not even try to talk. 

  What’s it like to be quiet all the time?  That’s a good question.  I know that I have no trouble not speaking.  That’s not going to be a problem.  The problem is going to be how to communicate to my very hard of hearing husband.  This is going to be a learning experience for all of us.  I know it will be very self-revealing for me.  The last time that I had to do this it was fulfilling and self-revealing.  Time will tell.

  Thus begins my new odyssey. 

  As a side note, I will miss not speaking on the phone to my two sons who are far away.  Chat doesn’t do the same thing.  I also already miss talking to my father.  I haven’t called him to spare him worrying about what was wrong with me, now I cannot talk to him at all.  That is something that will be hard.  I will offer it all up for him.  I love him more and more as each day passes.  This only adds to that love.

  • 1:57 pm
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