I've been suffering from chronic laryngitis for the last couple of years. I've had it probably 6 or 7 times by now over that span, and it's very annoying.

I've seen multiple doctors about it, and have had the following recommended:

• Peppermint tea
• Honey
• Rest
• Antibiotics
• Steroids
• Antacids

It's been unclear on whether any of these has helped at all, but one thing I've been able to determine is that it generally lasts about a week, maybe longer. The longest I dealt with it was around Thanksgiving in 2023, when I had no voice for about a month and a half.

Of all the things that I've noticed, it's that just before I start to lose my voice, I feel very run down, more so than my usual lethargy from the other medical crap I have going on. Otherwise, I have no other symptoms that go along with it, no fever (though there was one time where I did have a mild one), no cough (other than intentional ones to try to force something to work), no sinus drainage, no reflux, nada.

This round started last Wednesday. I thought the run down feeling was just because we were busy the week prior and that week itself. But later in the day, I felt my voice start to fade, and it went to nothing by mid-day on Thursday. It slowly and minimally improved over each of the following days, allowing me to get a longer run out of the voice each day before it went away.

Friday, I decided to schedule at my allergy clinic to see an ENT about it. I just got back from that appointment a moment ago, but here's what went on.

First, they gave me a high volume/high pressure spray of Afrin and Lidocaine. That was awful. I spat a good bit of it out, and I kept smelling and tasting it for a while thereafter. Then I had a chat with the doctor about everything above, which prompted him to go ahead and shove a scope up my nose and down my throat.

He said my sinuses looked great, except for a deviated septum and a spur in my left nostril. Moving down my throat and past my tongue, everything looked good. Then he got to my larynx and had me make an "EEEEE" sound. He said that everything was red around there and that the vocal chords themselves were swollen, which suggested acid reflux to him.

I have no memory of any reflux symptoms last week or before, and I'm pretty aware of what they would feel like. But since he's the expert, I trust his opinion for now.

He put in a prescription for a once-daily antacid and wants me to do that for 3 months before we repeat the scope. If all is good then all is good. If not, he'll send me to see another type of doctor that uses a similar scope with a high speed camera attached to it to see what's going on with the vocal chord movement. If it goes that far and they do see issues with how they move, it'll point to my ankylosing spondylitis being the culprit, which means I'll have to talk with my rheumatologist about it more.

For now, I'm trusting what the doctor said, as it's much more specific than what any others have in the past. In the meantim(e), I have to rest my voice for 2 weeks, so I'll be non-vocal in team meetings and whatnot.

I've blogged about it before, but things aren't getting any better.

I can't think of a time, going as far back as my mind allows, when I didn't have some sort of a symptom related to this. When I was young, my parents and I assumed it was a pinched nerve in my arm or something. As I've gotten older, I've noticed the patterns, though. It's all getting way more frequent, and far more painful or otherwise disruptive.

The most recent symptoms are just repeats of things I've had before:

• Tactile Allodynia - Pain sensation to a light touch, even triggerable by air movement
• Twitching - Looks like a tremor, but is very localized to a hand/finger or a foot/toe, lasting several minutes if not days, and has always been on my left side
• Muscle cramping/spasming - I can't find a clear medical distinction between the two, so I've lumped them together. It comes and goes, though, and is almost always in my left arm, left hand, left leg, or left foot.
• Aphasia - I lose the ability to process things like words, sounds, or other things. It's not that I can't hear, or that I don't know how to read or write (this blog alone should tell you that), but rather my brain loses the ability to make sense of things. Music will sound just like noises, speech will sound similar, but turning it into useful, comprehensible things just completely shuts down.
• Middle Ear Myoclonus - I've had a hearing test and I have excellent hearing, but I get this thing in my right ear where it sounds and feels like someone is physically tapping my eardrum. The neurologic audiologist I saw said it's completely benign and my hearing system is otherwise perfect.

Today, It's a cramping/spasming thing, but in the weirdest way. It feels like I slammed 3 of the fingers on my left hand in a door. It's the proximal phalanx, not in any of the joints. As I'm typing this, I'm feeling it elsewhere, like in the same relative bone in my thumb. It's excruciating, and I'm just waiting for the meds (Gabapentin, Cyclobenzaprine) to do their thing.

I just want a doctor to pay attention to all of these things and understand how disruptive they are to my life and help me to identify what it actually is and how to treat/manage/cure it beyond what I've been doing.

August 1, 2008, I set foot in my first living space in the Houston area. On the west side of the city, right along Interstate 10, it was my biggest and one of the most important chapter changes in my life. Having lived in a small city in Indiana before, and a rural area prior to that, also in Indiana, I was overwhelmed by the grandeur of this new metropolitan area.

August 4th, I made my way to the downtown Houston office for the first time, nervous about working in a more corporate environment after working for small companies and startups prior. It was wild, parking in the downtown lot, taking the elevator to the second floor, and setting my stuff up in a cubicle on a side of the building that was still being set up. I recalled stepping outside the office and staring in amazement at the skyline that was close enough to touch. I even took a picture, sharing with my family and friends back home in Indiana, and feeling nervous about the future ahead.

Here I am, 16 years and a couple months later, staring at my final day in that office, surviving 2 major acquisitions/mergers, arriving at IBM after it was all said and done. Our leadership decided though that we were not going to occupy that building any longer, and that we had to be out before the end of October this year. Fortunately, though, they had organized other office spaces for us to occupy, relative to our roles within the company. Mine, and that for most of the people adjacent to me in the organization, is actually closer to where I live now, on the 5th floor of a high-rise on Houston's west side in the Westchase District.

It's bittersweet for me. I have a lot of memories, some silly, some amazing, and some frustrating at the downtown office. I got used to the area, and took great advantage of all that was nearby, including the downtown tunnel system. But on the west side, it's not as familiar to me, and we don't have the convenience of a tunnel system, of which to navigate the surrounding area subterranially. But I know it's going to be a great experience, may actually be a quicker commute, and will expose me to new people, new benefits, and there will be new memories to form there.

I'll have to find my picture I took of the downtown skyline from the downtown office, and try to replicate it tomorrow before I leave for the last time.

For the last 8 or so years, I have been dealing with a condition called aphasia. This comes and goes, and as such, it's classified as transient.

This condition presents itself in multiple ways:

• I could struggle to process sound, that is, make any sense of it
• I could struggle to comprehend written/typed words
• I could struggle to comprehend spoken words
• I could struggle to perform certain "basic" tasks
• I could struggle to get words out of my mouth (or fingers, if I'm typing)

These are just the most common ways I deal with it. There may be other times where it presents totally differently, though that's not happened frequently enough for me to remember off the top of my head.

For the people with whom I interact, this may appear as though I am being ignorant to what they have to say or want me to do. With my work, I do a lot of text-based communication, and in those situations I often have to request for people to rephrase what they say. If I'm having a phone call or face-to-face conversation with someone, I will hear the sounds they are emitting, but my brain fails to process them as words. This often results in me asking the other person to slowly restate whatever they had just said.

While it is frustrating for everyone else, let me tell you how frustrating it is for me. It's like someone has bound my hands, put a blindfold on me, or stuffed rubber chickens in my ears. It's like I'm trapped inside my own head, much like that episode of "House" where Mos Def played the one guy who was trapped in his own head. For me, it's not as severe as what was portrayed in the TV show, but it's quite relatable for me.

When it comes to the struggle with basic tasks, the best example I can give is a time when I got up from my desk with the intention of going to the kitchen for a snack or drink. When I got to the door, it was closed and latched, and I stood there for 5 minutes trying to figure out how to open it. It's not a complicated task by any means, and I knew that at the time. I still got very angry though, because of how limited I felt.

If you ever interact with me and I tell you that I'm dealing with this aphasia, please grant me some grace and understanding. It's far worse for me than it is for you.

I've been listening to a few of Our Lady Peace's hits from the 90's, and I've got to say, they had GREAT musical abilities back then, even with the lead singer's nasally vocals.

I've tried to listen to a few of their newer things, and it's not as good. I even caught a more modern live performance of Superman's Dead, and it SUCKED.

Seriously, if you want good sounds, check these out:

• Superman's Dead
• 4am
• Clumsy

Pay attention to the musical qualities and aspects, especially on Clumsy.