I can’t tell if I’ve been spited or thrust towards enlightenment. It all started Saturday evening, when I came home from work. I went into the bathroom (don’t worry, this is going somewhere) and as I pulled down my jeans to take a seat on the throne, out popped my iPhone from my back pocket. It dove straight for the waters of my toilet, made a “plop,” and sank to the bottom of the bowl. I couldn’t help but laugh, right? I plunged my hand into the water (thankfully that’s all that was in there) and began to try to shake out the water. Fruitless. Finally I got the damn thing to turn off and watched incredulously as a bright white apple symbol faded into a watery LCD screen. The timing is the strange part. Monday marked the end of my other phone’s contract and I had been living with 2 phones, 2 phone plans. So luckily my back-up still existed otherwise I’d be screwed. I laid out a little towel and began a 2-day process of turning my iPhone like a rotisserie chicken to see if I could, by some miracle, dry it out enough to turn back on. Nope.

Alas, I go out Saturday night, iPhoneless, naked. I manage and come out on top, forgetting my woes with a few drinks and dancing the night away to country western music at a friend’s birthday celebration. A solid night.

Then came Sunday, and there was a certain point in the day, around lunchtime when I realized by the end of the day I was not going to have a voice left. Over the last month or so, I have been struggling with a raspy, hoarse voice that comes and goes. And I talk A LOT, in general yes, but mostly for my job because I teach. By the end of the day, I was outright yelling to produce any sound and I knew it wasn’t good. I went home early and by the end of the night, literally could not produce noise. Now it doesn’t matter how many drinks you’ve had, I know that’s not normal. The bar was noisy too, but I was doing more dancing and laughing than talking.

Time for action. I made a Dr.’s appointment yesterday and he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my still missing voice, so early this morning I had an appointment with an ENT. They held out my tongue and put a long metal pole into my mouth that had a camera attached to the end. It took video of my vocal chords. It was weird, but very cool to watch afterwards, as they have the ability to watch it in slow motion. Throats aren’t pretty places. Anyway, it turns out that I have either nodules or polyps on my vocal chords – it’s hard to tell based upon appearance. I could see 3 white bumps in the area where my vocal chords meet. I’m hoping they’re nodules because those can go away, but the Dr. seemed to think they could be polyps because of the formation. They develop out of overuse or strain to the vocal chords, basically just doing what ya do. Anyway, of course I’m supposed to go on vocal rest for 6 weeks. Ha! I’m just going to try to conserve my voice and drink lots of water. I’m also going to be starting voice therapy to see if they can help me. No coffee, chocolate, alcohol, smoking, or apparently anything fun.

Now I’m going straight edge, like it or not. Because if I change nothing, they could get bigger and really interrupt my life to the point of where I would need surgery. Yuck. No thanks. I’m going to try to be kind to my voice.

I was joking yesterday that the Gods of communication (maybe they exist, maybe not) had nothing but scorn for me or that the Universe was telling me something about the way I communicate. Maybe’s it’s just old fashioned bad luck that over the course of the weekend I lost both my iPhone and my voice.

Either way, I like to embed meaning into life’s events and I am going to take a healthy approach to this. It probably won’t kill me to use my phone less or have one that’s less technochic. And it also won’t kill me to adopt a healthier lifestlyle for a while. I’ll miss my coffee, but I know that tea has it’s strongsuits. And as far as no alcohol or chocolate, well that seems near criminal. But I was a damn vegan for over 3 years … I’m off to find where that willpower went. Maybe all of this will leave me feeling better than ever.