I lost my voice, and found something important

I had been tired all week, then my nose got stuffy and my throat a little scratchy.

Oh, great, I thought, a cold.

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It was the time of year for it in Arizona, when summer finally gives way to fall, and we get our first chilly days. (And by chilly, I mean, less than 80 degrees.)

I rifled through the cabinet for the Alka Seltzer Plus and then the refrigerator for a carton of orange juice. I sat one on either side of my laptop and went back to work.

But within a few hours, I was clearing my throat constantly. When my cell phone rang, I croaked out a greeting. I realized that each word hurt.

I kept the conversation short, hung up and then called out to my teenage son in the other room, “Do I sound funny to you?”

“You sound like a man.”

I would have preferred Lauren Bacall.

I got up from my desk and went to stand in his doorway.

“What sounds good for dinner?” I asked. The question sounded raspy.

“What?”

Never mind. Hot soup sounded good to me. I called our favorite Thai food restaurant.

“Karina? Are you sick?” the owner asked. “You sound sick.”

Fabulous. I not only sounded like a man; I sounded like a sick man.

But the soup did soothe my throat.

After we ate, I went to my friend Larry’s house where he was building a set for a youth musical. I had been charged with painting it.

Pursuing new interests helps paint a brighter life

“Wow,” Larry said, coming into the garage, “you sound sexy!”

Now that was more like it.

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But by the next morning, there was nothing sexy about how I sounded. I couldn’t speak above a whisper, and even that hurt.

I began to worry. It was Saturday, and I was slated to take part in a panel discussion at work on Tuesday. I would need to speak — and be heard — by then.

So as I do when confronted with any new medical development, I turned to the Internet.

Take aspirin, don’t call up WebMD

I read that there were things I could do that would help — drink plenty of water, gargle with salt water every few hours and sip hot tea with honey. But, really, the only way to get my voice back was to rest it — as in, stop talking. Completely.

How hard could it be? I would channel my inner Ben Franklin: “Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.”

No problem.

Back at Larry’s house a second day, I painted a star-studded galaxy on the inside of a big red science textbook as I listened to him talk about work and his family. I smiled and nodded. He told me funny stories about when he was in college. I occasionally croaked out questions or whispered commentary. But mostly, I listened and painted.

We worked for stretches at a time in silence, save the buzz of the saw and hammering. I painted the United States Capitol on the inside of an orange American History textbook and assured myself that I did not need to say anything to fill the quiet. It would be fine, and after a while, it was.

When I got home that night, my neighbor Kat called from the dark to come sit by the fire on her porch and have a glass of wine. I stood under my porch light so she could see me and texted her on my cell phone: “You don’t want me. I lost my voice. Some kind of virus, I think.”

“I hope you feel better,” she called back. I waved and went inside.

I waved at Sawyer, too, who was watching an episode of “Elementary,” a crime show featuring a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. I stretched out on the couch next to him.

I did my deducing in my head, thought it through and then chose the fewest possible words to show off my brilliance. “He did it,” I said, pointing at the screen.

“Really, mom?” Sawyer said. “Even though you have to strain and it obviously hurts, you just can’t stop talking!”

I stuck out my tongue at him. No words necessary.

I hadn’t realized how much I talked until I couldn’t.

Over the next few days, I talked just as much but inside my head. I thought through everything first. I had to decide if what I was going to say was worth it the strain. A lot of the time it wasn’t.

The more I talked, the more exhausted I felt — and the more it hurt.

So I was a better listener.

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I’ve known Larry for years, but in the two days I spent with him working on the set when I couldn’t talk much, I probably found out more about him than in all that time because I didn’t interject my own stories or think about what I was going to say next.

I just listened — and learned.

My son, who is 16 and often communicates in single words, would glance at my interested expression, wait for me to say something and when I didn’t, keep talking.

And when my neighbor Aaron needed to talk through a problem, he did just that, without me cutting him off and offering suggestions before he was even finished. Then, once I had all the information, the advice I offered was succinct and solid.

I stayed out of some conversations — the new cups at Starbucks, Shamu shows at SeaWorld and the Republican debate — because I didn’t have anything to add that someone else hadn’t already said.

I didn’t tell off other drivers. Not out loud anyway.

I didn’t talk about things that didn’t matter.

I didn’t talk about other people. Not that I’m a terrible gossip but like Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt and long-time Washington socialite said, “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.” It simply wasn’t worth the energy.

I only said things once, and it was enough.

“Clean your bathroom,” I told Sawyer on Sunday. Not a 10-minute lecture about how I was preparing him to live with other people in his college dorm, or a correspondingly long rant about how I have to do everything around here. Just those three words.

He cleaned his bathroom.

I made arrangements for getting everyone to the Veterans Day parade by text message.

Instead of saying, “I love you,” I made bacon for breakfast, mailed a bumble-bee swaddle blanket to a new baby boy, bought a friend’s new book and sent e-mails for no reason.

I’m not sure why, but I sat still when I drank the hot tea with honey. I mean, I chug coffee on the run out the door every morning. But I would take a 10- or 15-minute break, with both hands wrapped around the warm mug. It seemed to sooth my throat — and me.

Because I had realized just how much noise I was exposed to, with the Internet and television, 100 cable channels, Facebook and Twitter. Everywhere I go, there is music, piped-in announcements and people talking, often one on top of the other. I let it in my car and my house. So much information swirls around me that it is sometimes hard to know what to give my attention.

When I stopped talking, my whole world was a little less loud. I’m going to try to keep it that way.

On Monday, I had to reschedule a phone interview with a soldier in Kabul. But by Tuesday morning, I could speak well enough to participate in the panel discussion. Afterward, I called Marian, whose mother had died, to make sure she was all right.

And then I stopped talking again.

Reach Bland at karina.bland@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8614. Read her blog.

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