Grampa Simpson has left the building…
The voice has gone again.
Completely.
He’s been back at work a week, with restricted hours (9.00-12.00 until Tuesday, then yesterday and today 9.00-3pm). They had hoped he would be back full time next week. His voice seemed to be coping, no change in pitch, tone or hoarseness; his energy levels have been all over the place, but for now we’ve put that down to doing very little for 3 months. The voice vanished mid-sentence in a conversation with a work colleague who immediately assumed he was joking and started laughing. Slowly it dawned on them that it wasnt a joke, and that he really couldn’t talk.
Thankfully he was laughing about it when he got home (I think for him it was one of those don’t know whether to laugh or cry moments), but consultants and GP’s have been phoned in the hope of chasing up that “urgent referral” to the speech therapist.
At least, following the consultant appointment we know there’s nothing too scary going on, no nodules to be removed or nasty growths. Doesnt make it any less frustrating though, especially for him.
I feel for him, as a child I suffered terribly with losing my voice until I missed nearly a whole year of school after a wind pipe infection, took them a while to discover my vocal cords were the source of all my problems and the only course was then to send me to a speach therapist to teach me how to speak all over again using them differently. Hope it doesn’t get to that stage, I still can’t look at a balloon without hearing her voice in my head telling me to make it vibrate!
Comment by revk — September 7, 2007 @ 6:09 am
Bummer.
We’ll have to get him one of those speaking computers like Stephen Hawking’s.
Comment by Rhiannon — September 12, 2007 @ 8:22 pm
Thankfully, it has improved, back from a squeak to a hoarse croak. Still waiting for the speech therapy, and like Kirsten, its not so much a cure as a re-learning how to speak properly (or at least audibly)
I’ve been teaching him bits of sign language. Biggest problem is I know elements of the ASB liturgy, hymns and lots of bad language, after being taught ages ago by a deaf teenager so I could translate worship for him. Guess which bits he’s using at work…
Comment by oldcynic — September 12, 2007 @ 8:59 pm