Thursday, August 25, 2005

Deep Throat

Since Saturday, I've had the raspiest voice to ever come from a woman. It's not even sexy. I sound like a 60 year old smoker with a few squeaks thrown in for good measure. Dave called me squawk box.

I thought my raspy voice was coming from a respiratory infection since I've had a phlegmy throat and low energy. The low energy wasn't helped by the fact that I haven't been able to sleep at night. This sounds disgusting, but I thought that all the phlegm from my throat was draining into my stomach and giving me an upset tummy and nausea all day long. For the past few nights, I've been tossing and turning in bed till 3am because my stomach is so upset that I can't sleep or if I do fall asleep I'm awakened by nausea a short time later. It sucked. I can live with the phlegmy throat and raspy voice. I can't live with feeling like I'm going to be sick 21 out of the 24 hours of the day.

Yesterday, I decided that I wasn't getting any better so I made a doctor's appointment. Surprise, Surprise! I was so completely wrong in my little diagnosis. The doctor informed me that most likely I have acid reflux which is causing my nausea. Stomach acid is traveling up my esophagus and affecting my vocal cords thus the raspy voice. As a result of the acid, my esophagus is producing phlegm to protect itself. The acid reflux is probably being caused by stress which I don't doubt since last week I was a hormonal stress ball (need I remind you). It all makes so much sense now.