ENT Doctors

Wow... another experience I've never done before. About four weeks ago I had a terrible, terrible cold. I would wake up at night with coughing fits. I was not able to go to voice lessons; which, when you're a vocal major is not a good thing. I went about a month without voice lessons. Finally, my voice teacher said she was afraid I had blisters on my vocal chords from coughing so much. She suggested a visit to the ENT Doc. Little did I know exactly what that entails:

I went to the Doctor's office and waited for about 45 minutes and was finally ushered into a room where an elderly gentleman asked me what was wrong. When I told him, he tried to make a joke. :) You know how that goes. It wasn't exactly funny, but he was a nice man so I humored him. He then proceded to stick this long wire with a little bit of cotton on the end up/down my nose. It was supposed to numb my nose area. It didn't. He did it a couple more times, each time putting more medicine on it and would stick it further and further down. "Does that hurt?" "YES!" (It's a metal wire up my nose, what do you think??) Finally, I could handle it to the point where he could stick it partway down my throat. Then he said, "I'll go get "the scope'."

This scope was not mouthwash. It was this old-looking machine with a rubber tube and at the end of the tube was a flashlight. I then laughed nervously, "he he, where does that go?" "This will go through your nose and down your throat and then we'll be able to see what's down there." My nervous smile disappeared. "That rubber thing will fit in my nose??" "Yup"

The Doctor took my face in his hands and placed my head at the angle he wanted and then said, "Let's give it a try, shall we?" "ok". In went the tube. "OW!!!!" "Oh. Does that hurt?" "ummm, yes" In went the medicine. It was a little better. He stuck the rubber tube through my nose and down my throat and wiggled it around a bit to get a better view. At the end... he yanked it out.

The experience of a lifetime I tell ya. Hopefully, I only need to go through it once. He was a very nice man. I'm just not a fan of throat scoping I decided. The good news is that there is no blistering or any problems. My muscles just didn't like the coughing. I need to rest a bit and then it will be fine. Another eventful day in my life.