The Perfect Storm

This summer, I experienced a lot of health issues that seemed to revolve around my asthma. My asthma seemed to take a radical turn for the worse. My allergist was beside himself. Figuring out the cause for the problem was especially a concern for me. It seemed as though the summer was an example of a perfect storm. The long, wet winter and wet spring resulted in a lot of molds to which I'm severely allergic, and it turns out that in my attempt to get fit, I was actually making myself worse. The chemicals in the pool were affecting my breathing as well. And although we had licked most of these problems with a lot of medications (Let me tell, you prednisone is a very interesting drug.), I was still having problems with my voice.

As a teacher, you can imagine how difficult it is to teach several large classes a day when your voice is constantly failing. One minute it would get "froggy" as Mari describes it, and the next it would be fine, and in the next it would be virtually nonexistant. It's been very frustrating. Well, finally, my allergist sent me to an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor...I'm sure they have some sort of "-ist" name, but I'm not bothering to look it up. So, a couple of days ago I had a laryngoscope (a camera put down into my larynx). Nothing nasty was spotted and given the information I gave him, he diagnosed my problem as Laryngopharyngeal reflux or LPR. Basically what that means is that stomach acids get up into my larynx and cause damage there. The surprising thing is that I usually don't experience any heart burn pain.

I guess there is a surgery for worst case situations, which is, frankly, looking more and more appealing every day. The standard treatment is medication and diet, and boy, what a diet. It's so restrictive, but in ways that I'm not accustomed to being restricted. Nothing acidic: What you'd expect, oranges, pineapples, etc. but also tomatoes and onions! How can I live without tomatoes and onions?! Also, no dairy, or fried foods, or caffeine, or alcohol, or chocolate, or, or, or. Today, I learned that butter is excluded as well. Ok, I figured all along that it was out, but I was pretending to be dumb. But seriously, if you can't have anything else, how can they take away butter too.

It's been a couple of days now. I stewed all through the weekend. Yes, I'll undoubtedly lose weight, but at what cost? Part of me wants to say screw it and go around with a raspy voice forever, but then I learned that this is a condition that could lead to cancer. So before I demand the surgery, I'm going to give it the old college try. But there's no way that I can commit 100%. I'll try to make efforts to be good, and so far, except for the butter, I've done very well. I've even given up caffeine completely, which might also account for my buzzing head this weekend. I've ordered a cookbook, and I'm simply trying to figure out how to survive this thing, which by the way, is probably permanent.