Communication Breakdown

Got a call from a telemarketer the other day. I really can't stand telemarketers, or salesmen in general. Sorry if that happens to be your profession. Betsy always tells me that it's just somebody trying to make a living. She's always very patient with salespeople. Not me. I'm awful at haggling, and go out of my way to avoid it (thank you, CarMax!!). Whenever someone sells something to me, I always feel like I got suckered into buying it afterward and inwardly seethe that some pushy salesman just took advantage of me. This is off topic though! I obviously have some personal matters to talk to my therapist about, and by 'therapist' I mean whiskey bottle.

Anywho, I get a call, and my phone says it's from Mt Airy, NC, which is a small town where my grandparents live. I answer the phone, thinking it's them, and a strange man starts talking:

Me: "Hello?"

Dude: "Hello, Ma'am, I'm calling from the blah-blah security company. We're installing security systems in your area, and Ma'am, we'd like to put a sign in your yard as part of our marketing campaign. It doesn't mean you're buying a security system for your home; just helps us sell our product."

Me: "Sorry, I'm not interested. Thanks anyway."

Dude (as I'm hanging up): "Ma'am, have you ever had a secu- [click]"

Yeah, that's how I handle telemarketers. Usually hang up much sooner though. Telemarketing is a thankless job and I hope I never have to do it. 

There is a Seinfeld episode for all of life's minutiae

Or if you're on a mobile device: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRh1CMC3OVw 

Did you catch that Dude kept calling me 'Ma'am' though? I might've listened to him if he didn't mistake me for a girl, but it happens all the time on the phone now. I've become "Mrs. Liebenow" to every telemarketer and every doctor's office. 

This is another gift from my radiation treatment. Not sure how familiar you are with how the voice works, but the vocal cords are two membranes stretched on either side of your windpipe (trachea). When you speak, the membranes meet each other as air is forced through the trachea causing them to vibrate and producing sound (I think I got that right). Here's a handy picture illustrating what I just said:

Isn't the human body an amazing instrument?

Because of radiation, my left vocal cord is paralyzed. So, while the right cord stretches out to meet the left, the left cord just sits there. This causes my voice to be softer and higher pitched. The end result is, I sound like a woman on the phone. 

This isn't my vocal cords; just something I found online. My vocal cords are MUCH better looking

On top of this, I have a limited jaw opening and my tongue and lips are partly paralyzed, so it's a bit more challenging to make some sounds necessary to enunciate English. I went to a voice therapist downtown for several weeks to try to make myself more clearly understood. I learned a number of tongue and mouth exercises and practiced making certain sounds while adapting for my present limitations. My speech therapist and I learned that when I speak softly, it is easier for me to enunciate words. Unfortunately, this often isn't practical.

For instance, I am the assistant coach of my daughter's soccer team. She had her last game of the Spring season this past Saturday. When two teams of 6-8 year-old girls are out on a field fighting for a ball while parents are cheering and screaming from the sideline, it can be difficult to give them instructions (at that age, they need ALOT of instructions). Our head coach is a bit of a talker. He's the father of five children, four of whom are girls, so he's used to yelling at little girls--that would sound bad taken out of context. Usually, he does enough yelling for the both of us. If he's not at the game, I get Betsy to be my voice and yell at the girls. Unfortunately, at this game the head coach was mostly busy disciplining his teenage daughter. I heard him mutter, "I hate teenagers" several times under his breath (so I can't wait until Grace is one). So, I was left to yell instructions at our team. Me yelling instructions is an exercise in frustration. Even if the girls were ten feet away, they either couldn't hear me or couldn't understand me because unlike the quiet office of my speech therapist, I was on a very noisy soccer field, so my loud speech was far too slurred to be intelligible.  

Her team name is the 'Cheesepuffs'. That name strikes fear in the heart of many other six year-olds.

Got hit in the face by the ball. Bled all over the field. Went up and got her participation medal like a CHAMPION

I was so depressed afterward because not only can I not play soccer anymore, I also can't even coach my daughter's team. Betsy immediately told me to stop feeling sorry for myself and said what everyone tells me, "it could be worse; you're lucky you can talk at all." At first, this just pissed me off more. I know it could be worse. Can't I just wallow in self-pity for a while?!? Do I have to be completely happy about what's happened to me because "it could be worse"?

As usual, my wife is right though. I'm lucky to have any voice at all. Some people can only speak at a whisper. Others have to use artificial voice boxes. The last couple years of his life, Eric O'Gorman (another tubie who I frequently mention on this blog) was unable to speak and had to use an app on his smart phone to talk to people. He said he liked to use a woman's voice on the app and see the reactions he got from people. 

I have another friend who is a disabled veteran. He is one of the veterans I go horseback riding with every week (http://travelingtubie.blogspot.com/2013/11/veterans-day-parade.html). He has an even tougher time making himself understood. His mother is fiercely protective of his privacy so I'll call him Will. Will was a Marine and did a deployment to Iraq. He safely made it through deployment and was on leave back in the US but got shot in the head while standing in line at a restaurant. Now, he's confined to a wheelchair. He has trouble holding his body upright. He's completely unable to take care of himself. His speech is extremely hard to understand. Sometimes he'll start a thought and pause mid-sentence as he tries to collect himself to finish what he was saying. Often the pause lasts so long the people he's talking to get impatient and either try to finish his sentence for him or pat him on the shoulder and focus on something else. The frustration I feel at being misunderstood is barely a tenth of what Will goes through. His mind is trapped; filled with thoughts that he's unable to express. He doesn't even have the dexterity to type what he's feeling--like I'm doing now. 

You know what the craziest thing is though? He can swallow, so his mom constantly tells him to quit complaining. "You're just lucky you don't have a feeding tube like Brian!" she says. Wow. I can imagine how he'd like to respond to that, but I try not to use too much profanity on my blog.

So, yeah, I've got it pretty good. Sure wish I could yell at a bunch of six year-old girls though.