Cardiothoracic Vascular Surgeons Office
Franciscan Health
Lost In My Mind, Illinois
“now look...
if you're gonna come around here
and say those sort of things,
you gotta take a few on the chin...
yeah you're talking about sin and redemption
well you better wear your thickest skin...
sometimes you can't please everyone,
sometimes you can't please anyone at all...
sew your heart onto your sleeve
and wait for the ax to fall...”
- Skin, Vigilantes of Love
Sometimes it’s a word.
A phrase.
A decision, a disagreement, a diagnosis can do it.
Definitely a diagnosis.
It’s spoken, then it floats in the air like a tiny white cloud from a cottonwood tree.
Dreamy.
Poetic.
Floating just long enough to distract you from seeing anything else.
It’s that moment in a conversation when the other person says that something and then you don’t hear any other words after that something.
It floats in the air like like a tiny white verbal cloud, blurring all the other words that follow.
My cardiothoracic vascular surgeon was describing my upcoming carotid endarterectomy with the enthusiastic detail of someone truly in love with their work.
Precise, thorough, patient, with the appropriate amount of dark humor he assumed I could handle.
“Think of it like this, you’ll come out of it with a really cool scar - it’ll add to your whole vibe!”
Cool.
Scarneck.
If anyone gets to slice open my neck, I thought, it’s you.
“As with any surgery, there’s always about a 1% chance you won’t come out of it alive...”
Nothing in this life is 100%, I thought, other than you telling me I’d have another stroke if I don’t let you slice open my neck, so, you win.
I can live with those odds, I thought.
“...and there’s a chance, a small one but a chance nonetheless, that you could lose your voice or some use of it...”
There they were.
There were the words - that something - the phrases, the dreamy, poetic, tiny white clouds that hung in the air blurring everything else that followed.
Not the slicing and scarring.
Not potential death.
No, not those words.
These words:
“You could lose your voice.”
Lose your voice.
Your voice.
Lost.
Studies show that up to one-third of all carotid surgery patients suffer some form of vocal cord damage.
One medical journal states:
“Patients can suffer vocal cord paralysis or damage, resulting from any surgery during which they are intubated to artificially support breathing.
Intubation itself is a risk factor.
One common cause of vocal cord paralysis following this surgery is from a dividing of a nerve that attaches to the vocal chords called the recurrent laryngeal nerve. At the least, patients can experience a hoarse throat for up to 18 months...”
One study was conducted where the voices of patients were recorded and analyzed digitally, one and three months after the operation.
Voice data were then measured for what is known as “standard deviation of fundamental frequency, normalized noise energy (NNE)”, and, dig this, “jitter and shimmer “.
“Jitter and Shimmer”.
Come on now.
Buried deep in the robust technicality of the medical community’s vocabulary are a couple of words that sound like they could have been lifted from the seedy underworld of blues legend Robert Johnson’s crossroads.
When the dust finally settles from my quasi-Covid19 tales, at least I’ll have the title of my next album: “Jitter and Shimmer”.
If you’re reading this - and I’m very grateful that you are - you probably know me from different legs of my journey.
Some of you knew me as a kid, or as a rebellious, wise-ass teenager and young adult trouble maker, and you still probably think of me that way.
Some of you have known me as a pastor, and that might even surprise others of you who didn’t know that’s what I did for a significant part of my life.
Others of you know me as a painter, hustling to brighten up your houses or offices with a fresh coat of paint.
There’s a few of you who only know me as “__________’s Dad” - fill in the blank with any one of my insanely talented, beautiful and unique in their own way, charismatic children - Chuck, Eric, Paige or Troy.
Or as the husband who married the way out of his league, how did he get her, she deserves medals Lauren, the woman who stays by his side, come what may.
And some of you know me as a musician, a singer in both a local rock band with a decent little following called 2BukkChukk, as well as the guy who plays solo acoustic gigs in dimly lit bars and raucous breweries.
They’re one in the same, just different chapters of the same book, and the narrative arc, the thread running through the story, is...singing.
The lifelong love of music.
Of playing a guitar, of writing a song, of interpreting someone else’s song, of being on a stage or sitting on a barstool, hearing a smattering of applause from people just looking for a brief escape from the rough edges of life.
Singing.
Singing needs a voice.
Pete Townshend wrote it, Roger Daltrey sang it, The Who killed it:
“It's the singer not the song
That makes the music move along,
I want you to join together with the band...”
I know, everyone is a singer.
Everyone.
From American Idol to The Voice to the X Factor to the endless parade of You Tube wannabe stars to every shower opera baritone and soprano around the world, everyone is a singer.
I get it.
I’m no Elvis, Frank, Freddie, or Marvin.
I’m no Mick, Dylan, or Smokey.
Hell, right now I could barely tour as a Tom Waits tribute act.
But “You could lose your voice”?
When the tiny, white cloud from the cottonwood tree floated away, I finally blinked, breathed again, and nervously asked, “Doc, can we go back and talk about that voice thing again?”
Jitter and Shimmer indeed...
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