What if..

Laryngitis diary

First entry, day: 6

"What if I can't sing anymore, will you still love me?"

J came over last night after work to distract me. For five days I stayed home, cooking, going back and forth from doctors to home, cleaning, waiting for Internet to work, answering endless smses from clients, eat, taking pills, washing, cleaning...emailing, a mini-crisis-management centre. A mini one enough to get me go quite insane.

To find replacement singers for three performances, back to back from tomorrow to Saturday.

Nice break, I took J's advise to distract myself. I pop in a DVD (Sex And The City, couldn't be bothered with something arty) and watched from dusk to night. Then we had supper of egg buggers when he came over, and finished watching The Pursuit Of Happiness together.

Today, third visit to my GP for loss of voice. She said I am to start on papase, and she up the dosage of my prescribed steroid...and then I SHOULD be fine by Friday.

...but this is what it's like for me, these last few days, last few short (painfully long for me) days, it's like am sitting in a cell, barred from my normal life, waiting for my jail sentence to be written (if the outcome is a bad one), or waiting for the jury to give a favourable verdict (if the outcome is a good one).

Whether or not I'd be fine by tomorrow, or Friday, or Saturday...next week, who knows that, all I can do is sit here and wait (ok, besides sitting I also eat, take pills, gargle salt water, sms, emails...) , wait and see. I have no control as far as my voice box is concerned.

And then I diligently look back at any records of my last case of laryngitis, back in February, during CNY. I counted down the days of my recovery before I had my first performance, on Feb 20th. Got infected on Feb 5, cancelled a show for Feb 8 (or was it 7?), I managed to perform with a voice almost back to normal on the 20th. I remember that performance well...I was placed in a chilly-cold dressing room to prepare myself. I had with me a big jar of Manuka honey and I was sipping water and honey.

So that Feb episode took 14 days. I had between last Friday to tomorrow, 6 days from infection to first performance. Will I make it? Are you kidding? I don't know! Thank goodness for my replacement singers....Zal, Angela and...Michelle?

I see no gradual improvement of my voice in the past 5 days. Have been drifting from feeling frustrated to given-in-relaxed, back and forth, back and forth. J said this stress is probably releasing hormones that are hinders to my recovery. He also understand that it's not easy to not think about it.

Loss of voice and a singer.

What if.

If you were an artiste, have you ever thought about what kind of a person you would be if you have to

stop painting forever

never dance again

never sing again

stop acting forever

never to run again

stop playing piano for good

never bake another cake

never to see ever again

....