Day 8

So, yesterday I said that I was going to be productive today and instead I accidentally woke up at noon and then messed around all day, but it's okay! Kenneth and I got Chinese take out and then I got to see Gilbert for a little bit. I'm letting him borrow my old camera because he's taking photography this semester. I'm really excited for him, and hope that he loves it as much as I do! It was so great to see him, he brought me flowers and a card. It was really nice to see him, I've missed him a lot. I miss all of my friends. I do feel bad though because without being able to talk there isn't much for me to do as far as entertaining goes.

Almost a third of the way done! Whoo!

So far, I'm pretty proud of myself. When I first saw an ENT and he thought I had a nodule and suggested vocal rest, I really only didn't talk at school but talked at home. It really wasn't vocal rest at all. But this whole time I've been really good. I hope that it all pays off.

I've been watching the Glee Project on Oxygen and I watched the season finale this afternoon. The premise of the show is that they get a bunch of people my age to sing and dance around in front of Glee producers and every week one of them gets kicked off. It's like idol but only the Glee producers vote and the winner gets a 7 episode guest run on Glee, which really could turn into anything. Now, a lot of my friends don't even like Glee. I like Glee because I pretty much love anything that involves singing (even HSM sometimes, guilty pleasure- don't judge!) but mostly I have just been watching this show thinking "I could totally do this, I could be on this show. I'm just as good a dancer as all these kids... a better singer and actor than most of them..." And usually I don't feel that way but I did when I watched this show. Well, until this afternoon when I watched the finale. For some reason I got this nervous feeling. I dunno, if my voice is better by the time the next auditions roll around I might try to get a group of people together to go audition with me. I like the idea better than that of Idol or even The Voice because the winner gets an acting job out of it.

So I promised to talk more about my vocal chords today. I thought I would post the three pictures I have of my vocal chords. This first one is before I was treated for Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD). You can see that my chords kind of look like globs of red silly puddy. They're really inflamed and bumpy. So inflamed that we couldn't exactly see what Cystina was. The first ENT I went to, Dr. Frost, believed her to be a vocal nodule, that would go away with rest and time. The image is also really crooked because I was so inflamed throughout my nasal cavity that they had to twist the scope around just to get a look at my vocal chords.

This next picture is from three weeks later after intensive treatment began. I was taking 2 different Acid Reflux medications a day, plus a liquid antacid before bed. No eating three hours before bedtime, and the head of my bed was elevated. I also went on my "rest" where I didn't talk during school hours. I was really hoping it would solve all of my problems. You can see in this second picture that the swelling went down significantly, but you can now clearly see Cystina. Again this picture is crooked because of the camera angle.

The last picture is the picture my surgeon and new ENT, Dr. Olson took after he removed Cystina. This was taken with a completely different camera, so the coloring is different. You can, though, see that there is far less swelling in this picture even though they just removed the cyst and there is a big ol' breathing tube shoved down my throat. I think they're looking pretty good if you ask me! Also, I'm pretty sure this image is upside down. But whatever.

After my follow up appointment, hopefully I will have a new picture so you all can keep up with my healing progress. I'm supposed to have an appointment with my speech pathologist in a week, but I vaguely remember after surgery my mom telling me that Dr. Olson didn't seem to think that was a good idea. But I can't call anyone to find out what's going on so hopefully they will talk to Kenneth. I dont want to miss any appointments! Also, I don't know where my follow up is with Dr. Olson, because I met him in pre-op at the UNM Main Hospital, but I vaguely remember after surgery someone mentioning something about the offices at Academy... I don't know. I'll find out though!

So there you go, a catch up on my day and some gross pictures of my vocal chords!