What\u2019s the connection between unleashing a dog and starting a gas-powered lawnmower?<\/p>\n
Answer: they both look the same when Mrs. H. mimes them.<\/p>\n
Not hugely interesting, you might think, but then you\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
Next question: what\u2019s the connection between Mrs. H. and Adele?<\/p>\n
No\u2014it\u2019s not the colourful use of language. (Well it is, actually, but that\u2019s not what I had in mind.) The correct answer is that they\u2019ve both suffered damage to their vocal cords, possibly through excessive singing. In Adele\u2019s case, it was a vocal haemorrhage in 2011 as well as more damage this year; by contrast, Mrs. H. only has \u201cnodules\u201d. But the treatment is the same\u2014complete rest of the voice. She\u2019s not even allowed to whisper.<\/p>\n
The list of singers who\u2019ve had similar problems is not short. It includes Elton John, Rod Stewart, Whitney Houston, Bj\u00f6rk, Freddie Mercury, Luciano Pavarotti, Justin Timberlake, Joss Stone\u2026 the list goes on.<\/p>\n
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\u2026 Mrs. H.: you\u2019re now a member of the \u201cBMV\u201d (Buggered My Voice) club.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m pretty sure that there are many husbands who would think that a rabbit-free six weeks sounds like their idea of heaven.<\/p>\n
(BTW, \u201crabbit\u201d is short for \u201crabbit and pork\u201d, which is cockney rhyming slang for \u201ctalk\u201d\u2014and yes, \u201cpork\u201d and \u201ctalk\u201d rhyme in the East London accent.)<\/p>\n
Gentlemen: I can assure you that it is quite the opposite, for all involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe muted one\u201d**<\/span> 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\u2019s not as involved in social interaction as she is usually.<\/p>\n Those around \u201cthe muted one\u201d suffer from not being able to understand.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the question of \u201cthe muted one\u201d 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\u2019s head, they\u2019re all bloody annoying for all concerned, including \u201cthe muted one\u201d. If you\u2019ve ever trained a dog to ask when it wants to go outside, you\u2019ll know that you\u2019re then a slave to the back door for the rest of that dog\u2019s life. Well, this summoning of attention is similar. The dog probably hates ringing the bell, and so does Mrs. H., but it\u2019s a necessity. (Although at least she won\u2019t pee on the back door mat if you ignore her.)<\/p>\n Another thing we\u2019ve noticed is that people speak loudly back to her, or they speak to her minder-du-jour<\/em>, 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\u2019m sure they\u2019d like to smack the side of their spouses\u2019 heads too!<\/p>\n 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\u2019ve had to resort to technology, both old and new, to communicate.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Couple of problems though\u2026<\/p>\n Firstly, most of the voices are intensely annoying, although \u201cDaniel\u201d is the least so. He has a British accent, reminiscent of absolutely no one I can think of, and the vocal quality doesn\u2019t grate.<\/p>\n Secondly, typing on Ipads and phones for us \u201cnot spring chickens\u201d is a little hit-and-miss. And like a good little automaton, \u201cDaniel\u201d dutifully reads out what\u2019s been typed. He does a surprisingly good job of enunciating \u201cMuy wune glkass needs a toop-yp\u201d, but unsurprisingly, I struggle to interpret his monotone rendition into something sensible.<\/p>\n Another technology we\u2019ve tried is pen and paper. Slow, but effective. Unless I\u2019m driving, in which case I\u2019d 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\u2019s ability to keep up with the demand.<\/p>\n The most effective method we\u2019ve 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\u2019s effective. And when you\u2019re driving, it\u2019s no more distracting than say changing the car\u2019s heat setting.<\/p>\n 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.\u2019s contact with the outside word.<\/p>\n So, with two weeks\u2019 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\u2019t be understood. Her iPad is full, her phone is full, she\u2019s borrowed a couple of my 64GB memory sticks, and she\u2019s contemplating buying a couple of exabytes of cloud storage to get her through. We\u2019re going on a road trip in a while\u20143500km each way. She normally does a running commentary of the sights and scenery we\u2019re driving past (even on our way to the grocery store), so I imagine she\u2019ll 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\u2019ll be making up for lost time, no doubt.<\/p>\n Unless I can convince her ENT specialist to tell her that she needs more rest.<\/p>\n Where\u2019s that clinic\u2019s phone number?<\/p>\n ** I\u2019ve used the term \u201cthe muted one\u201d throughout this piece because I\u2019ve spent longer researching the political correctness or otherwise of using the word \u201cmute\u201d as a noun than I have writing this bloody article! Come back next week to read my thoughts on this. What\u2019s 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\u2019re 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… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[488],"tags":[403,401,404,400,405,402],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bbs","tag-adele","tag-mute","tag-non-verbal-communication","tag-silence-is-golden","tag-text-to-speech-app","tag-vocal-cord-damage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1608,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions\/1608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"