Cancer, I’m learning, can throw a nasty curve ball.
I took an afternoon nap about a month ago and woke up with no voice. I expected the issue to pass and so did my doctor. But weeks later I can still only speak with some effort in a hoarse whisper. It’s like that old Dad joke when someone talks too much through the TV show and you pretend to mute them with the remote. Only I’m the one who’s been muted. A more serious look into my throat determined that my left vocal cord is paralyzed. You need two vocal cords vibrating healthily to be able to make noise. My family is familiar with vocal cords. My wife Barbara’s bout with thyroid cancer ten years ago left her in danger of a tracheotomy because only one of her cords survived the disease and subsequent surgery. Her voice has slowly grown from a whisper to a nearly normal tone as the remaining cord grows stronger and compensates. This is particularly bad timing, however, since I have invited a lot of people to an “author’s reading” this weekend. I am the author. (The book is a delightful travel memoir entitled “Three Cents a Mile.”) And now I can’t be heard, not even with a microphone. The reading will be done by family members. The source of the paralysis is apparently a cancer tumor in my chest that is pinching the nerve leading to the vocal cord. That was a revelation to me because it was the first I heard that I had cancerous tumors in my chest. There is a temporary remedy to my voice problem. It involves a long needle either through my open mouth or through my neck to inject the vocal cord with a gel or another material to plump it up -- giving the healthy cord something to vibrate against. But it’s not happening before this weekend and I haven’t had a real conversation with the doc yet about the procedure and possible side effects. In the meantime, all my phone calls start with, “Can you hear me now?” My aging dog either truly can’t hear me or is using this as an excuse to ignore me. And my wife, accused in the past of not listening to poor ol’ me, is anxious to not give me an opening and is hyper alert. So much agita over the sound of silence.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |