Minor Disasters and Lost Voices, The Importance of Friend Support During a Plague Year

Songbirds – goldfinch with fountain and sunflower

Minor Disasters and Lost Voices

So, this has been a stressful week of minor disasters – the biggest one being not mine, but my husband Glenn’s. Right after his 50th birthday, he lost his voice. I booked him an appointment with an ENT after he tested negative for strep and covid, and a couple of days ago, we found out the reason for his lost voice – one of his vocal cords is paralyzed. Sometimes this can be fixed by surgery, sometimes not; it can be caused by cancer, benign growths, neurological problems, or even a virus. We’ll get him a CT scan next week to rule out anything scary, I mean, hopefully we rule it out. And then we’ll start figuring out accommodations, like maybe getting an intercom for the house so I can hear him from a room away, or a special microphone for his zoom calls.

In case you’re wondering, the goldfinches seem to me to represent Glenn – he’s blond, and loves to sing and talk, and is suddenly unable to. Hopefully he will get his songbird voice back. It might not be the prettiest voice, but I’ve gotten to be fond of it over 27 years of marriage, you know?

Songbird on sunflower

I am pretty tough when it comes to scary diagnoses for myself, but I was pretty distraught when I heard this. Glenn just got a new boss, he’s in the middle of graduate school, both of which require a LOT of talking clearly over Zoom, and he just can’t. He was so frustrated by his inability to communicate, sing, or even be heard across the room. I’ve written my share of poems about the Little Mermaid’s terrible trade of voice for legs, mostly in relation to losing my mobility periodically due to MS; I’d never written about it from the other side, what you might trade to have a voice. Glenn has a doctor’s note for his, what they are calling, possibly permanent disability. I’m hoping it doesn’t hurt him too much at work or at school; with us, our relationship can weather a whisper, although I grieve for him, because he really loves singing and joking around with others, and he feels very unwillingly-quieted by this new development. I’ve had to take over all phone duties for the house, and try to communicate with his family for him, that sort of thing. Of course, we have text and e-mail, but it’s not quite the same, especially long-distance. So if you’ll send good thoughts for his healing, for his CTscan (that they don’t find anything scary,) and that he has some success with vocal therapy, which might help within a year (the doctor was careful to say maybe on this) I would appreciate it.

Hummingbird in flight

Friend Support During the Second Plague Year

One of the things this week reminded me of was the importance of the support of friends and family during hard times. Nearly everyone I know has had some hardship with mental health this last year and a half, and we are all in need of more kindness, more tolerance, more support. This week I talked with family, friends all over the country, and even caught up in person with one this weekend, all of which helped me and Glenn regain some sense of normalcy with all the craziness.

The whole thing with Simone Biles, who had a very challenging childhood even before she was sexually abused by her US team gymnastics doctor and went on to become the face of the 2020 Olympics, made me think about how even the very best, most talented people are challenged by the past year’s super stress, that a lot more of us are at our breaking point than we might think. I am wishing that Simone gets all the friend support she needs after this very public “failure” or more accurately, “refusal to perform while she wasn’t feeling up to it.”  It’s a reminder that we are more than our performances, and we all deserved to be valued as human beings, not just gymnastics medal winners, or for the things in our past that we’ve accomplished.

I had tea with fiction writer Roz Ray, yesterday, who was just a ray of sunshine, and we talked writing and Glenn even got to talk-whisper a little bit about data science, which is what he’s studying in grad school. It was a nice reminder that life can go on, even with modifications. I guess I feel discouraged and overwhelmed – summer is very tough on my MS symptoms, and dealing with this health crisis of Glenn has left me generally worn out.

I was very much looking forward to starting virtual Breadloaf next week and then my residency in September, which I hope will help inspire my writing and my motivation to work on a new book, but now I just hope both me and my husband are well enough to make it through both and that the Delta covid doesn’t get to us. I’m trying hard not to anticipate the worst, but to be prepared for it, and to have self-compassion as well as trying to practice greater compassion for not just my spouse, but everyone around me. We need to be there for each other more than ever. I’m wishing you all health and happiness. Take a deep breath.