She Who Must Be Lip-Read

(~5 minutes to read)

What’s the connection between unleashing a dog and starting a gas-powered lawnmower?

Answer: they both look the same when Mrs. H. mimes them.

Not hugely interesting, you might think, but then you’re not making the effort to empathize with a lady whose ability to speak without pausing for breath is legendary, and who is having to suffer six weeks of total voice rest.

Next question: what’s the connection between Mrs. H. and Adele?

No—it’s not the colourful use of language. (Well it is, actually, but that’s not what I had in mind.) The correct answer is that they’ve both suffered damage to their vocal cords, possibly through excessive singing. In Adele’s case, it was a vocal haemorrhage in 2011 as well as more damage this year; by contrast, Mrs. H. only has “nodules”. But the treatment is the same—complete rest of the voice. She’s not even allowed to whisper.

The list of singers who’ve had similar problems is not short. It includes Elton John, Rod Stewart, Whitney Houston, Björk, Freddie Mercury, Luciano Pavarotti, Justin Timberlake, Joss Stone… the list goes on.

In fact, the more you DDG (Duck Duck Go, my search engine of choice), the more you realize that vocal cord damage is almost a rite of passage for a singer. So… Mrs. H.: you’re now a member of the “BMV” (Buggered My Voice) club.

I’m pretty sure that there are many husbands who would think that a rabbit-free six weeks sounds like their idea of heaven.

(BTW, “rabbit” is short for “rabbit and pork”, which is cockney rhyming slang for “talk”—and yes, “pork” and “talk” rhyme in the East London accent.)

Gentlemen: I can assure you that it is quite the opposite, for all involved.

“The muted one”** suffers endless frustration caused by not being able to express thoughts, make themselves understood, or even be paid attention to. Mrs. H. also reports feeling lonely because she’s not as involved in social interaction as she is usually.

Those around “the muted one” suffer from not being able to understand.

There’s also the question of “the muted one” summoning attention. Be it the ringing of a bell, the clapping of hands, the raising of a hand, or the smacking of the side of the spouse’s head, they’re all bloody annoying for all concerned, including “the muted one”. If you’ve ever trained a dog to ask when it wants to go outside, you’ll know that you’re then a slave to the back door for the rest of that dog’s life. Well, this summoning of attention is similar. The dog probably hates ringing the bell, and so does Mrs. H., but it’s a necessity. (Although at least she won’t pee on the back door mat if you ignore her.)

Another thing we’ve noticed is that people speak loudly back to her, or they speak to her minder-du-jour, or (in one instance, when she wrote down a question for a receptionist) they write the answer down for her. I guess this is what people with a communication disability have to endure all their lives, and I’m sure they’d like to smack the side of their spouses’ heads too!

Neither of us knows any sign language (other than the usual thumb and/or finger gestures that most of us know and love), so we’ve had to resort to technology, both old and new, to communicate.

The one with the most promise was a text-to-speech app for the iPad. Mrs. H. types, and the app uses one of a selection of voices to vocalize her words.

Couple of problems though…

Firstly, most of the voices are intensely annoying, although “Daniel” is the least so. He has a British accent, reminiscent of absolutely no one I can think of, and the vocal quality doesn’t grate.

Secondly, typing on Ipads and phones for us “not spring chickens” is a little hit-and-miss. And like a good little automaton, “Daniel” dutifully reads out what’s been typed. He does a surprisingly good job of enunciating “Muy wune glkass needs a toop-yp”, but unsurprisingly, I struggle to interpret his monotone rendition into something sensible.

Another technology we’ve tried is pen and paper. Slow, but effective. Unless I’m driving, in which case I’d likely be breaking the distracted driving laws. Plus, it enables Mrs. H. to write nearly as much as she usually speaks, and I was getting genuinely worried about the paper manufacturing industry’s ability to keep up with the demand.

The most effective method we’ve found so far is to use a magnetic writing board, such as those used by divers to communicate while underwater. It works a little like an Etch-a-Sketch (aka executive laptop, according to Dilbert). You use a magnetic stylus on a white screen, and iron filings are attracted into pockets. Hardly high definition, so you have to write bigly, but it’s effective. And when you’re driving, it’s no more distracting than say changing the car’s heat setting.

Mrs. H. took our visitor to Golden. BC, earlier this week; due to business deadlines, I was unable to go. Bit of a shame really; I would have enjoyed Silence in Golden. But our visitor did a fine job of helping Mrs. H. in the B&B and the restaurants and so on, and described herself as Mrs. H.’s contact with the outside word.

So, with two weeks’ silence under her belt, and four to go, she who must be lip-read is patiently making notes of what she tried to say but couldn’t be understood. Her iPad is full, her phone is full, she’s borrowed a couple of my 64GB memory sticks, and she’s contemplating buying a couple of exabytes of cloud storage to get her through. We’re going on a road trip in a while—3500km each way. She normally does a running commentary of the sights and scenery we’re driving past (even on our way to the grocery store), so I imagine she’ll be taking pictures and typing like fury into her various thought repositories all the way there. Her six weeks will be up by the time we do the return trip, so she’ll be making up for lost time, no doubt.

Unless I can convince her ENT specialist to tell her that she needs more rest.

Where’s that clinic’s phone number?

** I’ve used the term “the muted one” throughout this piece because I’ve spent longer researching the political correctness or otherwise of using the word “mute” as a noun than I have writing this bloody article! Come back next week to read my thoughts on this.