Now I'm the one writing things down

There is always one thing I can count on happening in my lifetime: Losing my voice! The very first time I lost my voice was on my wedding day (of all days!). Then it happened a couple of other times later on.

And now it has happened a fourth time. I can barely talk! Argh!

When I woke up this morning, my throat felt funny and a little dry. I thought that was strange. When I tried to talk later on, when I woke Jennifer up for school, I noticed that it hurt to talk. I strained to speak, despite the pain, and barely got any words out in a voice.

It was then that I realized that it’s happened again! I’ve lost my voice!

And when you are a parent with young children, that is never a good thing. Especially if one of those children needs to constantly be put in line!

Still, I managed the day okay. The kids felt bad that I couldn’t talk. I did get words out here and there, but only when I was saying one word. For anything more than one word, I wrote it down.

I used a dry erase board that Jennifer got for her birthday years ago. And even though he knew how to fingerspell, Jesse used it to write things down on, too! The same went for a little girl I babysit. These kids know sign. They can fingerspell. But I guess they wanted in on the fun of using the dry erase board to communicate with. Heh.

As for Jennifer, she continued to fingerspell everything like always. I also used the dry erase board to tell her things.

But sometimes I didn’t have that board with me, like when we were in the car or eating dinner. For those cases, I would whisper or sign to Jennifer or my husband to tell Jesse something because he couldn’t hear me. (I saw some friends today, too, and was a little embarrassed I had to whisper when I talked to them – except one, who I just pointed with.)

It’s frustrating that I’ve lost my voice again but thank goodness I don’t rely on my voice to earn a living. How terrible that would be! (I think I once saw on a TV show that Celine Dion tended to lose her voice a lot and there were times she would not speak when trying to protect her voice – or something like that!) I DO like to talk with the kids and my friends but it looks like I won’t be using a voice to talk with for a while. As a deaf person, I am used to people writing things down if I can’t lipread them and they don’t know sign. But until my voice comes back, I guess I’ll be the one writing things down. I know that this happens a lot and I only hope it will continue to be temporary. It would be awful if my voice never came back!