It’s 16 days before my surgery. It’s 16 days until I begin a 2-3 week period of medically-imposed silence . I feel a strong need to prepare. But how exactly does an Extrovert prepare to keep her mouth shut for an extended period of time?
I’m accustomed to getting prepared. In fact, I’m even familiar with preparing for silence. For instance, before I meditate, I light a candle, I open up a spiritual book, and I say a prayer. At a recovery meeting, I prepare to be silent at the prompting of the leader who says, “let’s open this meeting with a moment of silence,” which is also followed by a prayer. So I’m not a stranger to preparation.
But this is an entirely different type of getting ready. So far, it has involved doctor visits, speech therapy, emails and texts to friends and colleagues, calls to my health insurance company, cooordinating scheduled activities with my clients and bandmates, discussions with friends who are going to support me through the surgery & recovery process. There’s a lot to consider in the planning process.
But today, preparing for silence involved buying a dry-erase board. Yep, a mini-dry-erase board and markers. This will become my means of communicating with people while I’m out in the world. I did consider using my phone to converse with people, but then remembered that my ability to type quickly enough along with my inability to read the font on a smart phone could really slow down the communication process. I needed a different means of getting my message across. In the spirit of keeping it simple, I will write messages on my new dry-erase board. And I will remember to NOT use cursive when writing a message to a kid.
On the flip side of my talking board will be written these words:
“Temporarily unable to talk because of vocal cord surgery. Thank you for being patient!”
As I read that, I’m wondering if that’s too much information. I have been accused of being a chronic “over-explainer,” so I need to check in.
In any event, today, I’m feeling prepared in a practical way. And that, my friends, is a good thing!
I’m glad you’re blogging about this experience; I will definitely be reading and following your journey! I put myself on a 1 day vocal rest recently, because of vocal strain, and it struck me how much what we say is superfluous! I noticed that a lot of what I wanted to say was to express my opinion on things – do I really need to express my opinions so much? But I was just at home, not out in the world where it is harder to get by without speaking. Sending you healing vibes for this journey!
My mother had vocal cord surgery TWICE and she was very extroverted. She at times was unable to keep silent and did further damage to her cords (hence the second surgery). As weird as it sounds, I pray you have the obsessive control required to keep silent through your recovery. Just think – it’s a way to use that character defect of controlling as a power of good! It’s a perfect way to turn a character defect into a super power! I’m on Team Therese! You got this!
You asked the question on your post if the explanation on the back of the board was too much detail. As a fellow ‘splainer I think it’s a request for compassion and understanding. I thought about how I would respond to that vs something less descriptive like “can’t speak, thanks for your patience “. I think the latter has me speculating the “why” and in the absence of information I make stuff up – as do others. I may think the worst or disbelieve it. I think I like the sign with the limited explanation because it doesn’t let people speculate too much.
I just love you so much!