First of all, I
was out of the house this morning at 7:30 am to go to see Dr. Pimstone at UBC
Hospital.
I did a stress
test and couldn’t complete it. Next I wear a monitor for 24 hours, I get an echocardiogram
and then I see him again. He mentioned a pacemaker as a possibility but he also
said many people with arrhythmia are not
treated. I had an immediate instinctual response that I am not going to
need one. On the other hand, I could not complete the stress test and when I
hurried for the bus, I seriously regretted it due to the angina I experienced.
So this could go either way.
My next big
adventure is doing The Flame. It’s the story of losing my voice.
I’m feeling as confident as I did for all my past stories there, so that’s
good.
Just in time
for The Flame, I discovered another
way to speak. It’s another amazing weirdness about my speech but it’s not
likely something I am going to do very often until I practice some more.
But here’s the
thing: I’ve been closing my eyes a lot when I talk and I told Dr. Shoja. She
said she was not surprised; other people with speech disorders often do so because
it shuts off visual stimuli allowing them to focus on speech.
Because I don’t
stutter when I read, I wondered if I visualized the words I wanted to say, if I
would be able to speak better. And sure enough, I can. I speak slowly when I do
it but if I practice, I think I can get better. But I don’t stutter.
It’s exciting because
one of the hardest parts of life for me right now is using the phone. I find it
really hard to talk on the phone, but now, if I close my eyes and visualize
what I want to say I can talk far better.
A weird
postscript: I always see blue lines like in scribblers when we were school
children when I visualize my words. I can’t help it. It’s just what happens —every
time. And my eyes move as I read the words. I can feel them moving.
They follow the
line and move down constantly because it’s JUST like in a scribbler. I have to
drop down to a new line after several words. I run out of line just like in a
real book. I can’t just endlessly read along an unending single line. Weird eh?
My mother co-starred in a movie with Sophia Loren. As a kid, I saw A Boy on A Dolphin and thought I'd seen a goddess. |