An interesting point was brought to my attention yesterday afternoon.  People read my posts about my experiences with surgery and appointments but I fail to ever write a follow up post a couple weeks later to talk about how things are now.  I don’t know who exactly takes the time to read these, but I do think about that.  It also brings up another thought that I have, but I’ll save it for another time.

I feel like there’s a significant improvement from where I was at on December 9th. My voice is fuller, louder, and clearer than before.  Dare I say it sounds fairly “normal”?  I’m happy with it.  It kind of makes the three days of fun at ClubUW worth it.  Kinda.
I mentioned before that I decided this was my last ditch effort at fixing my voice, and I meant that.  I didn’t want to keep going through procedures without knowing what the outcome would be.  Fortunately, I’m happy with the outcome.  It’s not perfect by any means and I find that I get vocal fatigue a lot easier now, but as long as I have some water with me, it seems to help.  I’m wondering if this is just something that will get better with time as it continues to heal?  It’s possible my swallowing has improved, but frankly, I’m too scared to find out on my own.  I might ask if doing another swallow study might help.

I go in for my one month follow up on Wednesday.  The incision appears to be healing pretty nicely.  Can’t wait to see what it looks like in there now, and get some feedback from the speech therapist.  It’ll also be interesting to hear what Dr. Hillel’s thoughts are.  To hear if he thinks there’s actually more that can be done or if this really is as good as it’s gonna get.  I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts on the whole anesthesia debacle too.

I’m also looking forward to seeing Juli again next week to start my last two speech therapy appointments.  She might be able to coax a little bit more out of my voice as well.

All in all, things are good.  I go in for as blood draw next week also to see how my numbers are looking after the last dosage change.  I don’t necessarily feel better in that regard, but I don’t necessarily feel any worse either.  It’ll be interesting to see what the numbers show.  I still experience fatigue fairly regularly, which is what we were trying to solve.  Maybe she has some other trick up her sleeve, but I’m not optimistic.

It is entirely possible that February is going to be the first month I haven’t had a doctor appointment in over two years.  Oh man.  I’m looking forward to that!