The elevator opens and I see a man holding a boxcutter. He's flipping it open and closed as he cusses at someone through his airpods.

His construction vest didn’t cover the tattoos on his sunburnt neck. We made eye contact as I passed him to get to my room. The glance was brief, but I think he could feel I thought his cursing, his volume, and his boxcutter were in bad taste. His glance back was a mildly confused hostility.

An image of him lunging to cut me and my elbow breaking his nose flashes through my mind.

I leave the windowless hallway and I turn into room 408.

Somehow better and worse then expected, I find myself standing in a small waiting room. Again, no windows. One entire wall has nothing on it, the others each have a single ugly mass-produced painting.

After giving the receptionist my ID card, I’m told to fill out 4 pages of paperwork.

I repeat my personal information on every page. They won’t see me until I sign that I have read and agreed to their financial policy. I hear boxcutter man cursing and clicking in the hallway as I read through the contract.

Something aches deep inside me.

I’m finally called back. She tells me the doctor will see me soon and she drops me off in an even smaller, windowless room. After shel leaves the room, I stand up and spread my arms, almost touching the opposite walls.

10 minutes later a tall, thin man with dark blue eyes greets me. He is the best ENT my network would approve me seeing. He asks me my story, and I share.

167 days ago, my vocal chords began spasming. There was no acute physical trauma, infection, or illness. I can whisper fine, but when I try to speak in my normal voice it sounds like this:

I demonstrate. He nods.

He asks if anything stressful happened around the time this started.

I don’t tell him about the sigil and the ritual, but I do share reasonable work and relationship stresses and he seems satisfied.

He hands me a tissue and tells me he is going to blow something in my nose. He has in his hand what looks like an air-pressured paint sprayer. His movement, clearly the result of thousands of repetitions, finds my nostril and dispenses it’s contents before I had time to ask what it was.

I’m surprised at how violated I feel.

Hopefully not showing my frustration, I ask what that was and what he his doing. He tells me it is a decongestant; that he will need to look at my vocal chords. He tells me he is going to spray novocaine next. He puts another nozzle to my nose, and each nostril is coated with a thick mist that instantly begins to roll down the back of my throat.

The doctor says he will be back in a few minutes while we wait for the drug to begin working. He leaves.

My gaze fixes on an anatomical poster. The side of the head is cut down the middle. Dozens of labels attach themselves along the curve of the throat, nose and eyes. As the numbing begins to erase the sensations in my throat, I notice again the deep ache I felt in the waiting room.

Something is wrong. Not with the people, it’s the building. The windowless parking garage, the windowless hallway, the windowless waiting room, the — the receptionist walks in.

She has a clip board. As the novocaine begins to conquer my cheeks and the tip of my nose, she begins explaining to me that, in order for us to continue, I have to approve an additional charge of $215. She seems apologetic and slightly stressed asking me.

I laugh hard and it startles her. I tell her I don’t care, I approve it. Her eyes show confusion but relief. After she leaves, I fall into a stupefaction. The doctor gave me novocaine to do a procedure before telling me it would cost more, and then asked my consent after the novocaine had set it.

The ‘drug them before upselling them’ move is one not even the worse grifters I know would try.

It was harmless, I believe unintentional, and inconsequential, but the form of it was hilariously bad. Exquisitely bad. It soothes slightly the ache I feel.

Dr. blue-eyes comes back, and guides a long camera down my nose, past my throat, and looks around. He tells me everything looks normal. No tumors, no signs of cancer, and my vocal chords work properly when I sing.

Conclusion: spasmodic dysphonia
​Cause: unknown
Cure: none

He recommends botox injections. If I inject botox into the vocal chords, it paralyzes the over-active muscles. Most people who get the injections say it helps reduce the symptoms. It is not a cure. I’d have to get another injection every 3 to 4 months for the rest of my life.

I tell him I’m not interested and ask if he has any referrals to vocal training specialists. He leaves for a moment, returns with a slip of paper with a name and number on it. We share an awkward goodbye. I pay the receptionist and don’t see boxcutter man as I go to the elevator.

I softly cry driving home through downtown Austin.

Something is wrong and I struggle to name it. Its big and invisible. It arrived before I was born. It’s wrongness built the buildings I lived in and molded the education system I was dropped into. It has turned psychology, the study of the soul, into statisticians and drug merchants. It has turned medicine into something so ugly it pains my soul to look at it.

Where is the soul of medicine?

There is something uncanny about spasmodic dysphonia, specifically my case, that is focusing my attention on this ugliness I’ve looked away from.

6 years ago, I was hired as a research writer for a New York Times Best Selling author. I was asked to review and report on the scientific literature around depression and anxiety. That assignment shattered my view on modern healthcare. It is a story for another time, but instead of writing a summary report, I wrote a 16,000 word essay showing that most antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs are fraudulent, that the companies that produce them are criminal, and that the FDA was demonstrably corrupt.

I’ve never been more enflamed by a project before or since. It was the stories of the children whose lives were ruined by over-medication that broke me open.

I remember one afternoon, when I was almost finished with the essay, completely sober; I had a waking vision of a 100 foot tall female angel standing over a forest. She held out her arm, pointing at a city on the horizon. Her hand was on fire.
​
The felt sense was that she was pointing me towards the ‘arena’ I was suppose to enter. An arena that would require me to speak against pharmaceuticals, biological psychiatry, and our current healthcare system. At least, that is what I thought 'entering the arena' looked like. Yelling, accusing, blaming, attacking.

Now, with my trembling rebellious vocal chords, I'm entering the arena as a patient and a journalist. I'm witnessing how a 12 minute visit produces an incurable chronic prognosis. I'm holding the tension that to hope they are wrong might produce decades of disappointment. I'm experiencing how haphazardly friends and strangers recommend alternative treatments, and how exhausting it is.

I know my condition is soul orchestrated. I know that some 'great moral act' will relieve it. I know that perspective is heresy, and I know there is a chance I am wrong, and that I will live the rest of my life without regaining my ability to speak.

Regardless of what happens, I will make art from it.

I think this is the first act of a very interesting story.

I'll keep yall posted.

Song I'm Listening on Repeat

​Between Two Demons ​

Quote I'm Enjoying

“The gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus, and produces curious specimens for the doctor’s consulting room.”
-Carl Jung

“It is not the soul that is ill, but the world; and the soul must suffer the world’s sickness.”
-Carl Jung

“The patient’s neurosis is not just a personal matter. It is in large part a symptom of the spirit of the age.”
-Carl Jung