don't clear your throat

I went to speech therapy today. And the biggest take away from today was DON'T CLEAR YOUR THROAT. When I do that, my VC bang into one another. And I do it the whole stinkin' day long. Don't be me. lol

So she got me a small bottle of water to swallow I sip with all the gunk...instead of clearing my throat. Helps. Some. I think clearing my throat is a habit just because I have a lot of gunk from allergies.

We walked around a little bit and did some 'rescue breathing'..this time one sniff in and three pursed exhales, lather rinse repeat. Helps. And she let me feel around her middle to see what proper breathing is supposed to feel like so I can feel it on me too. Yes we probably looked like a weird pair walking around outside holding each other around the middle, but at this point, who cares. LOL

And she showed me how to feel the anatomy of my throat and do some different massage techniques at different points. Interesting..again...more than I ever wanted to know about my throat. lol

But she feels like I am making progress. Slowly. But I'm getting there. She is encouraged by where I am today. And that encouraged me.

She did tell me she is going to amend my care plan to include two more sessions just to get me more comfortable and get me across the finish line.

I adore my therapist. : )

PS..when I spelled "swallow" up there, I accidentally spelled it "swaller" which was immediately followed by a 'you might be a redneck' joke inside my head. ; )

update on my vocal cords

I'm learning more about my vocal cords than I ever wanted to know.

Did you know that clearing your throat makes your VC bang into one another?

Did you know that by learning a certain swallow technique, you can massage your VC?

Did you know that sniffing with your nose (two or three times) opens your VC?

Did you  know that sitting and leaning over so that your tummy is touching your thighs forces the rest that the upper body needs and also forces the diaphragm to work?

Did you know that the 'trick' to teaching the VC to relax is prolonged exhalation coupled with some inhalation tricks?

Did you know that sniffing a couple of times, then pursing your lips like you're blowing out a candle with a long exhale can relieve some of the severity of the weird hyperventilating kinda stuff I've dealt with?

Did you know that with VCD, lying on the floor and attempting to relax, helps the diaphragm to kick in and help relieve the stress up top? (including the double sniff and slow audible exhale thru the pursed lips)

ME NEITHER!

As you can see, speech therapy has been an enlightening experience.

I can say that perhaps today, so far I have not felt horrid. I call that a win at this point. I did my stretching and floor belly breathing before I did errands this morning and I didn't feel like a basket case while I was gone. Was I still short of breath much of the time? Yes. But it was't over the top.  And I could do some rescue breathing ("blowing out the candle") and not feel just completely awful.

I am also learning that I am extremely "tight" in my shoulders and upper body and trying to remind myself to gently stretch certain muscles when things start going south.

I mentioned to my therapist this week that it's been a long haul for me because this has been going on for about six weeks. She said yeah but its only been six weeks. I wanted to slap her. ; ) But then she said she had a patient that had it for two years because nobody knew what it was. So yeah, only six weeks. I would seriously have lost my mind in two years time.

But thankfully I am beginning to see tiny little rays of sunshine every now and then peeking through the dark clouds that have been all I could see for a while. : )

learning to breathe

So I've been sick. About a month ago I started having pretty severe trouble with my asthma, so I immediately went to my gp, who did a steroid shot and sent me home. She said that if I didn't get better, we would need to do a chest xray...which I was so hoping to avoid. But my breathing problems did not go away, so I got a chest xray. Which was normal...praise God! But I continued to have problems. So my gp wanted to send me to a pulmonologist but I couldn't find one near me taking patients so along the way I discovered that I might need to see an ENT. I saw her and she immediately sent me to an allergy asthma dr she trusts. He treated me for my asthma being out of whack and for about ten blissful days, I was symptom free.

But the the trouble started creeping back. My allergist told me if I started feeling like things weren't going well, to call because he wanted to listen to me when it was really bad. So I called. And he listened. And he backed away from listening to MY THROAT and exclaimed that he thought he figured out the real source of my problem. My vocal cords. I was all do what??? Vocal cord dysfunction...or VCD as it's called for short.

So he sent me to speech therapy which I visited last week for the first time. One of the first things she told me was that I was "lucky" enough to have found a dr that even knows what this is! And for only the second time during all of this, I have felt a ray of hope that I can be helped. You see...my vocal cords are shutting instead of opening when I breathe.  And because of all of that, my body is doing some strange things. Like using my shoulders and my chest muscles (that's a funny one) to breathe instead of my belly. So unless I am lying down, my belly muscles don't do any of the work of breathing. Its exhausting. And I constantly feel short of breath. Every once in a great while, I feel like I got a good breath with much stretching and contorting.

I am leaving out plenty in this story. Stuff like going to the ER with this and being told at one point by a nurse at my gp's office "so what if I give you the results of your xray today or not, you still won't be able to breathe" after listening to me beg (!!!) to hear my xray result on the same day it was done. And being discouraged from visiting the ER by another nurse at my gp. Mind you neither of these people are even remotely thinking about the fact that I am gasping for air. And neither had a clue what was wrong with me. (jerks) And it had been for a time by then.

So yes, it's been a very slow journey. I learned exercises for my shoulders and neck first and now some breathing exercises. She said it takes a minimum of a month to figure this all out and get relief. I am exhausted and at the end of my breathing rope. This has been and continues to be an incredibly difficult journey. Please pray for me. I appreciate it.