Losing My Voice

Walking with Cake: Rose bouquet

(A bouquet of fading roses. Still so pretty.)

A few weeks ago, Ryan came down with a bad cough and cold. I thought it might be bronchitis, which I had earlier this year, but the doctor said it was some sort of upper-respiratory infection going around, and it could last up to three weeks!  Yuck.  I did my very best not to catch it, so, of course, I did.  I’ve spent the last few weeks coughing and coughing, but I haven’t felt sick, thankfully.

Then two weekends ago, my voice started to fail, disappearing completely that Saturday.  Since then, it’s been fluctuating between a whisper, a screech, and a croak.  My throat didn’t really hurt, but I would start coughing in the evenings, and I’m sure that contributed to it.  It’s slowly getting better, though my ribs are really sore from coughing so much.

Walking with Cake: Falling roses

(These petals fell as I was taking pictures.)

I suppose, in some ways, spending a week without your voice could be introspective and even healing, but for the mom of two little boys, it’s been extremely frustrating.  Every morning, I woke up hoping that my voice had returned, and every morning it hadn’t.  I did my best to whisper (you’re not supposed to with laryngitis) and squeak to get my thoughts across.  Ryan had to interpret what I was saying at times, and we both got pretty good at anticipating what the other person might say next. Except when we were wrong, which happened a lot.

I also had errands to run and appointments to attend, so I got pretty good at pointing to my throat, quickly apologizing, and then trying my best to say what needed to be said.  I went through the drive-thru at Starbucks, and since it was empty, I drove straight up to the window to place my order. The attendant looked at me like I’d lost my mind, but she still got my order right.

I started to worry that maybe I’d lost my voice forever.  It’s not such a bad thing in some ways, and I’m a quiet person by nature, but I rely on my voice to to be heard in a noisy house full of boys.  I felt pretty powerless without the means to communicate easily, and I lost my cool on more than one occasion recently when I felt I wasn’t understood.  It’s been incredibly frustrating, to say the least.

My voice is starting to come back now, slowly, though it fades at the end of the day.  I’ve lost my voice before, but never for this long, and I really hope it doesn’t happen again for a long, long time.  The good news is that I’ve felt really inspired lately, and I have a week’s worth of posts to share with you.  I guess there’s always a bright side!

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