Monday, May 25, 2009

Silence Spoken Here

Some of you know this already, but I seem to have contracted a case of "allergy-induced laryngitis" over the weekend.
On Saturday, I drove out to Grand Rapids to attend the wedding of my friends, Nate and Amanda. The wedding was lovely and I was able to meet my dear friend (and former house-mate) Christina's then-twelve-day-old son, Gabriel; Gabriel is now 16 days old. Below is a photograph (edited in Picasa by yours truly) of my older brother, Greg, holding young Gabriel. As you can see, both are quite handsome.



















After the wedding, I got back in my faithful car and headed off to the reception with my passenger and friend, Steve. As we drove, I noticed (and he didn't) that my voice was getting lower and raspier. I thought this was a BIT odd but didn't really say or do anything about it. The quality of my voice continued to diminish and people began to notice. At one point, I was dancing with a guy who told me that I sounded "like a girl but with a really deep voice." Thanks, Chris...
The voice continued to slide and shortly before 9pm (the time Steve and I had designated for our departure for Ann Arbor) it completely crapped out. I could barely speak and my throat hurt a lot. So I went over to remind Steve that we were leaving in about 10 minutes and he went off to the dance floor. I took his seat and sat there watching the dancing with my good friend, Kyle. Anyway, Kyle and I were sitting there and we started talking because he was concerned about me. We learned that if I move my lips slowly, he can read my lips. And then I started having an asthma attack. Being a good friend, he ran and tried (but failed) to find my purse, so I had to go after him and get it myself and retrieve my own inhaler. BUT HE TRIED!
And then after I started breathing normally, he grabbed Steve and told him that it was time for us to go home. And then he gave Steve absolute orders to keep me awake. So we set out for Ann Arbor. And Steve very faithfully kept me awake.
The next day, I got up and my voice was more gone than it was the day before. So I went to Mass at Christ the King and then went home to while away my time. I had decided to essentially seclude myself from the world because it was too difficult to attempt to communicate with the rest of the world-even my own family.
Sunday night, I discovered that Kyle's twin brother, Alex, also had allergy-induced laryngitis but his had started before mine had so he was (gradually) getting better. But it was nice to have a partner in silence-even though we didn't see each other until Tuesday.
Last night, I went to UCO-Ann Arbor's prayer meeting. Alex was there but he's more talkative than I am. His laryngitis is closer to being gone than mine is. I'm now on day five and I can talk but I have a rapsy voice and it's physically still really hard for me to talk. My allergies are killing my throat. But I have allergy meds and claritin and books to read and movies to watch.
And hopefully this will all be over soon!

Speaking of books and movies, I have two really brief reviews for you.
Brideshead Revisited: Three out of Five; it's 11 hours long and while it's decent, it kind of drags after a while. Plus, I stopped feeling sympathy for the protagonists during hour 8 out of 11.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Three out of Five; it's decent. There is A LOT of immorality. The story is supposed to be moving and beautiful. But I was distracted by the immorality that is supposedly "spiritual."

That's one long blog post. I think that's enough from me for one day.

1 comment:

D.Cous. said...

That is a long post. Maybe your lack of verbal communication is getting to you :) I hope you feel better soon!