Same song…seven-hundredth verse?

Thomas Edi­son said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Let me assure you friends, that despite the fact that this was said near­ly 100 years ago, it was said entire­ly in ref­er­ence to the life and times of yours truly.

Light­bulb, Schmightbulb.

You see, I’ve devel­oped a pattern.

Step 1: Receive diag­no­sis for some­thing bizarre and unusu­al with no known cause

Step 2: Spend copi­ous amounts of time research­ing said rare malady

Step 3: Dis­cuss treat­ment options

Step 4: Dis­cov­er new aller­gy from seem­ing­ly innocu­ous treat­ment options

Step 5: Adjust to new nor­mal with non-func­tion­ing [insert organ name here] 

Step 6: Pour heart out on blog shar­ing new lev­el of deep acceptance

Step 7: Repeat Step 1

I am noth­ing if not consistent.

Last week I head­ed up to Philadel­phia for a few days of med­ical test­ing bliss and won­der­ment. It had been 6 whole weeks since I had trav­eled for a med­ical excur­sion, so it was high time that I pack my bags and skedad­dle out the door.

I start­ed the day with an esophageal manom­e­try. If you have nev­er had the incred­i­ble priv­i­lege of expe­ri­enc­ing this tubu­lar delight, it involves a tube snaking its way from your nose all the way into your upper small intes­tine. And just so you get to enjoy every minute, you are com­plete­ly awake and not at all sedat­ed. In a nut­shell, the manom­e­try mea­sures how well your esoph­a­gus works. I have actu­al­ly had this gem of a test before, in 2011, so I knew exact­ly what to expect…the won­der­ful doc­tor* who admin­is­tered the test agreed with my analy­sis that igno­rance is, in fact, bliss.

*I’d like to give a major shout out to the doc­tor who admin­is­tered the manom­e­try. She shared that she recent­ly asked a friend to give her the test so she knew exact­ly what it felt like. Let me be clear friends, this does NOT hap­pen often and is absolute­ly to be commended.

After 15–20 min­utes of get­ting up close and per­son­al with my gag reflex, I was sent on my mer­ry way and head­ed to the reha­bil­i­ta­tion sec­tion of Jef­fer­son Hos­pi­tal’s ENT (ear, nose and throat) depart­ment. There I met with a Speech Lan­guage Pathol­o­gist who focus­es sole­ly on the singing voice. You may recall from this post that singing has shaped a giant por­tion of my life so far, and I miss it tremen­dous­ly. At this point, I have had sev­er­al doc­tors tell me that I will nev­er sing again…so to be hon­est, I was some­what dread­ing hav­ing to hear that news all over again. Luck­i­ly, I did­n’t have to! The voice ther­a­pist is incred­i­ble and after review­ing my films, lis­ten­ing to me croak in rhythm with her piano and ana­lyz­ing every small detail of my breath­ing pat­tern, she placed me in the “not impos­si­ble” category.

You see, your vocal chords have the abil­i­ty to length­en and short­en, as well as open and close. Mine length­en and short­en, but don’t close.

At all.

Ever.

Hence part of the rea­son that speak­ing is exhaust­ing and singing is not even an option — I absolute­ly nev­er have enough air to do so.

Now, I’m not a doc­tor, but I do glean that oxy­gen is some­what impor­tant for basic life skills.

Plac­ing myself in the “not impos­si­ble” cat­e­go­ry may not seem like much, but to me it is a giant breath (ha…get it…!) of hope. I have a whole heck of a lot of hard work in front of me, but all is not defin­i­tive­ly lost and the sense of relief is palpable.

I have writ­ten before about my quest to lim­it how I label things as good, bad or indif­fer­ent. As humans, we like to com­part­men­tal­ize every­thing and I find it exhaust­ing. In the med­ical world, one sec­ond some­thing is great and the next it is dread­ful. If you wait five min­utes, it might get upgrad­ed to pass­able, or it might get much worse. It is a con­stant pig­gy-back ride on a super-exu­ber­ant Tigger.

How­ev­er, it is one thing to talk about how I will lim­it my labeling…it is anoth­er thing to actu­al­ly do it.

I learned my les­son on Fri­day, when I walked into my next appoint­ment, rid­ing on the eupho­ria of my voice ther­a­py, only to find out that the steroid injec­tions into my lar­ynx haven’t helped at all so far and my esoph­a­gus is also now par­tial­ly paralyzed.

Ya know, just for kicks.

It goes with­out say­ing that the “why” ques­tion is, as usu­al, impos­si­ble to answer. Come on peo­ple, I stick with a pat­tern. Just refer to step 1.

So now I go back to my routine.

I’ll con­tin­u­ing fol­low­ing steps 1–7.

I’ll fig­ure out what to do with my dar­ling esophagus…

and, let’s be hon­est, I’ll like­ly also fig­ure out what not to do.

And all the while, the world will con­tin­ue to noo­dle the grand mys­tery that is my body.

But friends, let me just be clear. I’m trust­ing Edi­son on this one.

No mat­ter whether it is 10,000 tries or 1,000,000.

One of these days?

The light­bulb is final­ly going to go on.