My last post got all

My last post got all sad and reflective, but I forgot to write about one of the funny things about working in an ENT clinic. In addition to seeing people with tumors and swallowing problems, you get the occasional speech therapy patient. People who have some kind of trouble with their vocal cords come to get evaluated and hopefully rehabilitated. As part of the evaluation, these patients undergo an electrical measurement of their vocal cord activity while they are making a variety of sounds. Often these are very loud sounds.

Yesterday, soon after I arrived in clinic, someone started this test. All of a sudden I heard this "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh..." Really loud, same note. It seemed to go on for minutes. Could this really be just one breath? Then they went up in pitch: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH..." So loud! It was like somebody was just sitting in a room, yelling. They probably didn't realize, of course, that literally everyone in the whole clinic can hear them.

Then they started saying phrases, again in the same loud, deliberate tone. "HELLO. HELLO." "BLUE." "WALK IN THE PARK." These phrases are just wafting down the hallway, in and out of exam rooms. Its hard to imagine the actual scene: someone sitting on a chair with electrodes hanging off them, getting prompted by a quiet, mild mannered technician to repeat after them. It's much easier to picture someone just sitting in there having an extremely loud conversation about very weird things while occasionally yelling for no reason. And this, of course, makes it impossible to concentrate on anything else. "WHAT'S FOR DINNER?" "HELLO."
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