Voiceless for a while

This morning I was looking forward to my appointment with Dr. Winkle, who is an Ear, Nose & Throat specialist.  His job was to look at my vocal cords and see why they are not working.  Since speaking is a very enjoyable part of a conversation, I was most anxious to get to the bottom of this.

My brother-in-law,  Bruce picked me up at 10:00am sharp and we made it to Dr. Winkle's office with all of our ducks in a row.  It was not a long wait before I was sitting on an examination table.  I immediately liked Dr. Winkle and his nurse and he got right down to business.

He first examined the inside of my nose because the nose is the door to the throat which leads to the vocal cords.  We talked "snot" for a bit, one of my favorite subjects and then he cleaned out some of those hard-to-pick interior corners for me with a suction device.  Man, I am clean as a whistle now!  He sprayed some stuff in there which anesthetized the path of his scope.  It tasted terrible but I could tell it was doing what it was required to do.  He then brought me into another room with his hi-tech camera on flexible wand.

It actually wasn't all that hi-tech.  I noticed right away that it was an old NTSC monitor he was using and he confirmed that the gear was vintage from the 90's.  It felt nice to have a conversation between a couple of guys who are super-comfortable with 90's video technology.  It did use fiber-optics but, yep, that's been around for a while.  I respect a man who uses tools that work just fine and doesn't feel like he needs the cutting edge "latest" expensive gear to do something that works great with the stuff he has. Dutch thriftiness.

 It took him only a few seconds to steer from my right nostril, through the channels down to the area where the vocal cords reside.  He had me vocalize "heeeee" a couple of times and then he pulled out. Prognosis:  My left vocal cord is paralyzed, most likely temporarily, since the nerve was not severed, only stretched.  It could be that way for 6 months. So essentially, my voice is the sound of one hand clapping.  Dr. Winkle sees this in about 10% of esophagectomies and he has a little procedure up his sleeve where he can spray some cellulose on the non-working cord which pushes it close to the working cord.  To use the clapping metaphor, this spray will position the bad hand in front of me so when I clap with the good hand it makes a noise.

On May 9, I will go into St. Mary's for a "microlaryngoscopy with left vocal cord Cymetra injection".  He says it takes about 45 minutes and I should be talking when I come out of it.

So I'll be sounding like an angry old Clint Eastwood for a bit longer.  The cough seems a bit more under control but it is still aggravated by talking. Karaoke will have to wait.