It's been a fun filled week - the highlight of which just had to be yesterday morning when I had a transnasal laryngoscopy. Basically, the doc ran a thin flexible tube with a little (very little) camera on the end up through my nose and then down the back of the nasopharynx where he could get a good look at my vocal cords.
Fortunately, the Slat Rat schnozz and nasal passages had been thoroughly numbed up with a combination of Afrin and lidocaine. Interestingly, up until about fifteen years ago, cocaine was the preferred nose numb-er. But my doctor said that the paperwork just became too onerous. Hence the switch to lidocaine.
Anyhoo, with the tube up my nose and down my pharnyx, I was then asked to do various little vocal thingies like make the "EEEEEEE" sound and breathe in certain ways. Everyone in the room, and there were lots of folks, then got to look into the tube to watch my vocal cords in action. I was the only one who didn't get to watch. Wah!
The purpose of all of the this was to check for vocal cord paralysis. The hoarseness of my voice has not improved, in fact it has become much worse. That unremitting hoarseness, in addition to a few other things, can be a sign of vocal cord paralysis. However, my vocal cords performed splendidly. They moved in and out like they should and they were healthy and pink - how cute - healthy and pink vocal cords...
What we now think is going on is that a combination of my chronic fatigue syndrome and resultant vocal and throat muscle fatigue and my various meds has led to my hoarseness and vocal cord dysfunction. So, we're gonna swap out a med or two. And I'll work with my speech therapist on various strategies.
The current strategy - beyond all my breathing exercises - is to pitch my voice up a 1/2 tone. It seems as if as a result of my fatigue, I've been unable to sustain my usual voice pitch which leads to a lower tone and then, over time, results in the extreme hoarseness.
As a start on the pitching front, my therapist firmly instructed that on telephone calls, I was to pitch my voice up that 1/2 tone.
So, if you call me and Minnie Mouse answers the phone, you'll know I overshot a bit on the pitching up front.
8:07:55 PM 
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