The Joys of Dysphonia

John was ill first, for a few days he was sniffing badly then he had a day on the sofa, we looked after him, bringing tea, medicine and snacks. Just a bad cold, poor thing.

Then it hit E and I... and oh boy did it hit us! What had been a day's rest for John was 3 days in bed for us. We were up all night long up coughing and sniffing, we all had to sleep in the same bed, E's coughing fits were scaring me and I didn't want her to be alone.

Then we started getting better and moved downstairs to rest on the sofa. We watched a heck of a lot of DVDs. E was too ill to play for 5 whole days, there has been no reading or 'school-work'

hot water with honey and lemon
This is the best thing to sooth my sore throat

My dysphonia is caused by laryngitis. Every-time I get a bad cold or flu, I get laryngitis afterwards. If I talk at all it gets incredibly sore and painkillers don't help much. (loosing your voice is called 'dysphonia' which sounds very exotic, but it isn't really, I just like the word) The disphonia is caused by swollen larynx (or voicebox) meaning that the vocal cords don't vibrate, even an attempt to whisper agitates the area and causes pain and more swelling.

The only thing I can do is stay completely quiet. Have you ever tried staying completely quiet for 4 days? (today is day 4, I suspect I have another day or 2 left to go)

I'm thinking I should have rolled it into a sponsored silence and made a few bob for a local charity.

Embarrassing factoid: I do, in all seriousness, use the speech function on my MacBook to communicate on occasion. It means I can sound like Stephen Hawking and come across smarter than I really am though.

* * *

Whoever said that 90% of communication is non-verbal was not home-educating a 6YO *sigh*

We can't read stories

"And the big brown bear came lolloping over the mountain"

We can't do crafts

"Please, don't put glitter on your eyelids, no, I said DON'T put glitter on your eyelids"

We can't do cooking or baking

"now add 1 cup of sugar, no just one cup, yes of that sugar, no, not that one, the other one"

We can watch DVDs (though I have one of those children who asks 5 questions every minute) and we might manage a jigsaw, or playing with lego.

The benefits of not talking though: I have been able to sit on my laptop and finish the on-line christmas shopping, so that's all sorted. I haven't yet finished the planning of the Christmas dinner for 20 peeps. Every year around Christmas my big family gets together and I do the cooking. (I pretend that I don't but I secretly love the craziness of it all)


Unfortunately, the day before John got ill he was in the final stages of fitting radiators. Which have remained half done.

I was fitting curtain rails, and the whole living-room is in a state of flux while we finish plumbing, painting and plastering, and this is just some of the mess we've left at our backsides... oops!

I was hoping to get the living-room finished for Christmas, but that isn't going to happen now.

Anyway, it is back to the hot chocolate and christmas planning for me. The tree won't go up until at least the 19th so we have  bit of time to do some catching up.