Push Pop

When I got pregnant with my first daughter I was speechless. He is gone. She woke up hoarse and no matter how much she rested, drank water and tried to speak softly, nothing changed that Olavo Bilac quality of “bringing it home.”

The first thing he did, as soon as he opened his eyes, was to sing a “whoa” to quickly conclude that nothing had changed during the night. Nothing. I went to a doctor who specializes in vocal cords. He told me that it is common in pregnancies for the strings to swell and give rise to temporary hoarseness. It was no longer just swelling on the outside, it was now happening on the inside, away from the baby.

When my daughter was born, I believed that as soon as she left my womb, my voice would be returned to me, as if the baby had temporarily rented my body while my voice was on vacation. Nothing. Maybe it will take a few days, I thought. After a few months I looked for answers in Chinese medicine. “He has little respiratory capacity” was the diagnosis. I entered with one ailment, I left with two.
I went back to the first doctor and the answer was the same: hormones. Hormones have broad backs, but beware, they are not saints. A woman is a victim of the hormone ray in adolescence, menstruation, pregnancy and menopause, that is, her entire life, except for childhood, a period about which we keep the fewest memories.

Not content with the diagnosis, I sought a third opinion. The new doctor advised me to do speech therapy, which I started after two days. I had monthly appointments with the doctor and weekly appointments with the therapist.

On one of the days of the doctor’s appointment, I arrived early and sat down to read in the waiting room. As soon as I heard my name, I went to the office and came across my doctor and three young women in white coats. “Luísa, do you mind that these medical students attend the consultation?” Of course I didn’t care. I imagined that, for those who were learning, it might be interesting to observe the vocal cords of a singer.

The doctor put the camera in my mouth and made it pass the epiglottis. Arriving at his destination, he stopped and analyzed the image on the screen. “Well, I see something on the rope here,” he said, observing those two curtains of meat. He put the image away and removed the camera from my mouth. “I’m going to have to ask you a question,” I said, this time taking my eyes off the screen and fixing them on me. He was waiting for my authorization. In the seconds that followed I thought: you’re going to ask me if I scream a lot at home, what else could it be? It doesn’t seem so embarrassing to me. “Say it, doctor.” The three medical students waited curiously, with notebook-like looks. “Does Luísa do a lot of oral sex?”

If I had to make a list of the thousand possible questions, even if it was extensive, it would still not be included. I’ve never had so much desire to be swallowed (perhaps not the best word to use in this context) on the ground. I started a speech without meaning, loose words, sentences without verbs. How did we go from hoarseness to oral sex? I don’t remember anything else, I just know that I left the office running, even with little breathing capacity.

What the doctor thought I had, and which turned out to be a wrong diagnosis, was a sexually transmitted disease that is seen on the vocal cords and that is processed through oral sex, but was it really necessary to expose myself like this in front of three strangers? Something I also never understood was the question itself, since an experience with a human Push Pop was enough to get infected. I also wondered about the word “very”. Isn’t the “very”, very relative?

I don’t remember the faces of the three students, but I believe they won’t forget mine.

The voice came back. I didn’t go back there.