Phase 3: Bargaining & Strategizing

Over the next week or so the haze of denial and anger that had been clouding my every move began to dissipate. I started talking about it, getting it out into the world so I could start dealing with it. Ever since the diagnosis in April, despite the outward avoidance of the issue, I knew what I had to do. Given a choice between continuing to live my life as is and risking an early end to my singing career, or changing my lifestyle and (for all intents and purposes) my identity to ensure a long and healthy one, I knew I had to choose the latter. I had to take the high road and not allow myself, once again, the luxury of giving up. But the knowledge of what I needed to do was not yet sufficient for putting it into action. Thus the bargaining began. I figured out ways to justify my normal routine by making small concessions here and there, or promising myself I'd do them in the future if this or that or the other thing happened along the way. And so it went until I had my first appointment with the speech pathologist.

Dr. B (as I shall call her) used a much less invasive apparatus to view my vocal chords and I wondered why on earth the previous doctor didn't have such a device. It was simply a rod with a camera on the end of it and all she had to do was put the rod in my mouth and point the camera in the direction of my vocal chords. No numbing spray or scope-up-the-nose maneuvers necessary. She had me sustain an "EEE" sound (which sounded more like "LLLLLLL") on a number of different pitches while recording the movement of the vocal chords. This all seemed so very familiar... perhaps I could've skipped the cranky doctor with the scope and just come here in the first place? Dr. B called them polyps, not nodules, and was much more concrete in her explanations, much more forthcoming, and much more demanding than doctor cranky-pants. She said they could go away within two months (versus a year, now that was something I could wrap my head around), and she wanted me to go on vocal rest for the entire two months. She suspected that might be impossible, so she gave me a list of dos and don'ts and urged me to take some time off, especially from the restaurant. When I left her office any embers of denial, anger, and bargaining were effortlessly extinguished and I immediately started strategizing. I looked at my calendar and decided that June was already far too busy to attempt vocal rest (or rest of any kind, for that matter), because I had projects lined up and didn't want to back out and leave anyone high and dry. Surprisingly, July had remained relatively open, so I cancelled the few commitments I did have and decided to do spend the entire month of July in silence. With that decision came... wait, what was it? Joy? Yes, I was actually feeling joyful! I wasn't just doing this because I had to, I was filled with excitement at the prospect of spending a month in silence. I was looking forward to the possibilities my recovery would present, and I'm pretty sure I skipped right over depression and went straight to acceptance. This was going to be amazing and I couldn't wait to see what kind of creativity would come out of this process - perhaps my first solo show or some new songs or a script of some kind....

It finally became real, and I was able to appreciate the amount of hard work I had in front of me. Re-inventing yourself, changing the pitch of your voice and the way you socialize and the things you eat, creating new habits and shedding old ones is no easy task but I wanted to move forward with gusto. I went home that evening and wrote an email to my boss, letting him know that I would need to take July off, and that up until then would have to be conservative about the way I used my voice; I wrote to fellow actors and directors and anyone who might need to know that I was going to be careful at rehearsal in order to save my voice for the performances; I did research on healthy living organizations and booked a three-week retreat so I could get out of my routine and have professionals guiding me through the process of changing my habits; I wrote a note on my OkCupid profile explaining that I was "taking a break from dating to deal with (unrelated) life stuff, but feel free to write if you're convinced we'll get along and you want a new friend." I figured I'd need to focus my energy on myself during this healing process and it takes a lot of energy to meet new people, especially if they're a potential mate. A couple days later I had a session with my voice teacher and I told her of my new-found joy and that I was seeing everything in a positive light now. She was thrilled and thought the best way to spend the hour was to have a ritual to say good-bye to my old voice. She had me write down words my old voice represented: strength, wit, depth of character, brass, sarcasm, wisdom, different, healing (to others), crazy, fun, talented, eager, powerful, attention-grabbing, noticeable, guts, trustworthy, interesting, catchy. Then she had me write down words that came to mind as I thought of my voice after the recovery when it is at its healthiest: clear, powerful, strong, lovely, easy, expressive, awe-inspiring, full, beautiful, fun, attention-grabbing, shocking, fulfilling. She asked me to read them back to her but I couldn't get through it as the ginormous lump started rising in my throat. I proceeded to spend the rest of the session sobbing as she led me through the "good-bye old voice" ritual. I'm not sure I've ever cried so much or so heavingly in my life. At the end of the session she said, "You're grieving, it's going to come in waves." Sure enough, over the next several days I didn't know when it was going to hit, but hit it did. She also said, "You know, it occurs to me that the thing that identifies you is the thing that's holding you back." Well ain't that just the way o' things? That night I went to a rehearsal and had some moments of real clarity; moments that, several weeks earlier, I couldn't have fathomed.