GETTING BACK TO LIFE...IN GENERAL....BACK TO MY MUSIC

     I had just returned to Marco island from my 10 year stint in Michigan being a scientist in Molecular Epidemiology.  I remember having this very nice gig 3 nights a week in Naples Florida... and I was also working at a day gig for a plastics company doing statistics on the computer with their efficiency formulas for their manufacturing computer systems...I could not have been happier.

     Then....I had a toothache and went to a dentist that I found...I had asked around and some of the other people at work said they thought he was good...so off I went.

     When I was sitting in his chair he took an x-ray of the area I had a problem with and when he came back in the room, he started feeling my neck and the glands around my throat....Well...!!!...I wondered why he was doing something that people do to you (like your Mother) when you are sick....so I asked....

     That was the beginning of a whole new reality for me....something I had never encountered before in my life....I was ill........All I heard was the word growth....He then walked me over to another office in the same complex we were in...This doctor was an oral-maxillofacial surgeon....I certainly could have gone my whole life without finding out what his job entailed.

     I went in the very next day for surgery.  Apparently this tumor was as aggressive as an a very aggressive cancer.  the doctor proceeded to tell me I had one of three diseases.....I do not remember what they were but at least one of them was a type of cancer and none of them was a good idea.

     The surgeon decided that it was always a better idea to have a local than to be put to sleep for the surgery so I acquiesced.  We began and after about 15 minutes of surgery I made sounds referring to the fact that it was hurting me and he numbed me again.  Again, after around 15 minutes of surgery I made sounds that it was hurting and he numbed me once more.  This went on every 15 minutes or so until he had removed two of my back teeth on the upper left side and scraped out the bone under them.

     Then this surgeon tells me that I cannot cry, whistle, sneeze, or cough for a few days until this heals because he has exposed my sinus cavity, and sends me home.  So let me get this straight.  They tell me I most probably have cancer, but do not cry because it will be very very bad if you do.  How nice.....I am not even allowed to have emotions about what I am going through.....

     Okay....Okay...I got it.....

     Did I forget to mention that on the way out of the office after surgery I have to write a check for how ever many thousand this cost???

     Sooo....knowing that I am going to have another surgery next month because what the surgeon is trying to do is save as many of my teeth as possible, I say to him, "I think we should go for the anesthetic next time.  I cannot take that pain again."

     Now, when I go back for my check up a couple days after the first surgery he says to me. "Amazing....It is healing!"  Now this takes me for surprise because he did not tell me this, but then he says to me "I did not sew it up because cancer tissue does not heal and I was just sure it was cancer"   The he says "Good news...It is benign".  I am thinking "Well of course it is.  I just knew it was benign".

     Then when I go back in for my second surgery the doctor tells me that pathology said it is not cancer.... Great!!!...but they do not know what it is.....hmmmmm.  This time I am thinking "No sh**t Sherlock" but I kept my mouth shut about it.

     Now his wife is a surgical nurse....so here we are doing surgery in his office..and he puts the proper stuff on my finger to check my pulse and the other things attached to me and he is putting the needle into my arm for the anesthesia and he has the gas thing over my nose and I do not like the smell of this gas.....and I am starting to shake and my legs are starting to jump and he asks me if I have anxiety and I say "oh yes"...and he takes the gas off my nose and puts a surgical hat over my nose so that I can breath some of my own CO2 now and stop the anxiety when I hear him puting tape over the needle and I say to him "Oh did I tell you I am allergic to paper tape?"...well no I did not.... So now I hear him taking the gloves off of his hands because he cannot get the tape off with his gloves on and well about that time I fell asleep.....I am no fun to do surgery on because I am allergic to everything.....


     You gotta just laugh at this though....because this poor surgeon is trying to do his job and encounters all this stuff that he has never had to deal with before....not that they are not used to that.....I am certain that every case is very different....but when you come across someone who is allergic to so much medication and medical items.,,,,you just have to feel sorry for this man going through this in the middle of the start of the surgery....I am allergic to 8 different things that can cause real problems in surgeries....I always have this great big red folder unlike the other people getting stuff done.    I can just see them talking about this for years....Like over drinks at the Christmas party...you know?

     Well then, eventually I wake up from this surgery and they have removed two more teeth and scraped out more of the bone again.  I cannot sit up because every time I change position from lying down to sitting up I feel like I am going to throw up.  So I am there in the office chair for hours and finally they put me into a wheel chair and roll me out and the family takes me home and I sit up all night long on the couch and puke black stuff for 11 hours....I had a double bagged grocery bags and a trash can there with me on the couch....it was just so much fun...

     When I went back in for the check up after this surgery the doctor said to me, "We sent this to the Armed Forces Unit in Bethesda Maryland for diagnosis.  I am thinking , "Good now we will get some answers."

After the illness I was singing again

     Well we did try to keep my eye tooth.  Now we had to crown the front teeth (which at this time were perfectly fine) to hold the partial in place....so the eye tooth became loose also and we had to remove it as well.  I told the doctor that I am NEVER going to puke for 11 hours again and we will have to do this with a local.  He agreed and added that now he understood my system to be one with a high metabolism and then everytime he would numb me, my body would metabolise it within the 15 minutes and I was no longer numb and he would just have to keep numbing me every 15 minutes and we would be fine and no pain for me.  He did this and we got along fine during this surgery.

  We did three surgeries, one a month, found out it was benign, found out it was not cancer but they did not know what it was...they sent my tumor(s) to the Armed Forces Unit In Bethesda, Maryland for pathology and it came back as "Histiocytosis X"...oh yeah...you guessed it...the "X" means they do not know anything about it.....

     This is a long, drawn out, very scientific illness so I will spare you the details and just tell you that I recently spoke to a pathologist about this and he informed me, once again, of how unbelievably lucky I am to be alive...!!!!! And I am sooooooo grateful to be alive...!!! They treated me like they had treated the other patients before me....Did I forget to mention how very, very rare this is.....So rare that no one is doing any research on this...And it is mostly children who get this........ And it is mostly fatal....I did however see the only specialist in the world, who happens to be right here in Florida....in Tampa at the Moffitt Cancer Center....of which I am now a proud card carrying member....

     Then, they treated me with radiation ...in massive doses .... (I will tell you this story later).... during which time if I had not spoken to my sister about this and she sent me to find a Reiki Master to help me through the treatments, I never would have made it.

     When I finally found a Reiki Master, she was also an RN and she prayed with me on the phone about my illness and explained to me that "I had to think of this treatment like God cradling my head in His Hands and it was through this treatment that He was saving my life"

     The radiation went up through my brain causing the most extreme case of anxiety the doctors had ever seen....I could not sit down or lie down or stop moving for 3 days until I drove myself to the doctor and said "get rid of this...make this stop...now" .....I lost my math functions and some of my word functions in my lexicon....The final straw was my diagnosis of PTSD.....Great!!!  Just Great....So now they decided to put me on massive doses of neurotransmitters and meds inducing them until I did nothing but sleep in my lazyboy chair for 9 months....One day I simply said ...Whoa!!! And proceeded to wean myself off of the drugs and went back to work.

     Now I became a country song.....I lost my great job because of downsizing at the company...I had lost my gig when I could not play because they were taking out part of my mouth at the oral maxillofacial surgeons office....the man I had been with for over 12 years walked out on me to another woman....and my dog died while they were radiating me....OKAY WHERE WAS THE TRAIN??? 

     Well there was no train in this song and no prison....but when you go through something like this you also have to remember that you pay for this while you are getting this or they do not do the work...So now that I had spent every last dime of my money... I had to go back to work....and I managed to get $300.00 out of my insurance companies (both of them) because the reports said tooth....even though it was the bone they were taking out..the teeth just happened to be connected to the bone.

     So now I was starting my life over....I found a job that I was on my feet 10 hours a day...I would go home at night and cry myself to sleep cause my legs hurt so bad from being in bed for 9 months and now having to stand up all day...I got over that and I got a better paying job which was horribly stressful...I learned lots of stuff though.

     A new man walked into my life and I was learning how to sail.  Thank you God.

     I am just praying that I can learn the right stuff from this experience and not have to go through it again....I am doing my best....Believe me....

     I could not even carry my brief case for awhile but I got back to where I could play and eventually carry my own equipment.  I had to keep practicing my songs until I could remember them over and over until the memories would eventually come to me.  Every day was just a little better as I worked hard to get back into shape....I had to start by exercising one minute at a time but I finally got up to an hour and off I went....Thank you again God

Pubs Are Always A Touch Classier Than Other Establishments....Plus They Have My Kind Of Beer...

     When you are out at the bar having drinks, how much of what goes on in the room do you see??

     Did you ever stop to think.....What do the musicians see all night long?? 

     We are out here doing what everybody does when they go out at night for dinner or drinks.

    While we sit here and they wait on us and bring us what we want to eat and drink and all the extras we can think of to ask for while we are there having fun drinking and dancing and eating and talking to each other and..... socializing.. ..basically.

     Now....what are the musicians doing? I hate to bust anybody's bubble but they are working.  They are doing what they do…. to the best of their abilities....for however many hours...2 or 3 or 4.      

    Sometimes they do not even take any breaks in that length of time. They just work straight through.

     Now you have to realize that according to physiologists the work a musician does on a stage is like 8 hours of work for every one hour they are on that stage...the amount of expended energy is tremendous compared to most any other kind of work, especially in that pay category.

     These people do not have a job.  They do not go to work.. They live work...they do not "do" something.  They "are" something.  Music is what they are.  They live it, breathe it, eat it, sleep it, and do it.  It is their God given talent, and if they pursue it and embellish it with many, many, many, years of perfecting their ability then they become very good at it.      

     They have given up a normal life of living in the audience where people wait on you and give what you ask for.  

     They have moved into the realm of being something.  Something God gave them, so they could “be” a musician.  And live out of the realm of the normal.  And in this different realm of frustration and emotion and thoughts put into a different language than others put their thoughts into, musicians still have to have their language understood.  So now somehow they have to also bridge the gap between their language and the other one that most people speak.

   Yet this is what musicians do....but they see everything that goes on in the establishment all night long...they may not see it with their eyes but they hear it.  This is just as good as hearing something to a blind person.... So much more is heard by a musician than a non musician...as also a blind person.  

     They hear music............and everything else.