Archive for April, 2011

  Hello to all my friends, new and old, from where ever you are,

I wrote this several weeks ago….I’m thinking the third week in April…. thinking I’d wait for a more positive outcome, I never posted it. I’m one to put a positive twist on anything if I can. I’ll be giving this to you in smaller doses so you can have time to digest it, more so than I did. HOWEVER, know that there’s an almost unbelievable story yet to play out…I won’t tell you till you’ve read what I think you need as groundwork… so here goes….

I haven’t posted much since my surgery. I know I promised I would but the healing for me this time has been very difficult. Not in the physical sense. Yes, I’ve been complaining about my neckbrace and the wires coming out of my neck. But, the physical parts of me are healing just fine. Most is on target or ahead of schedule. Amanda, my Dr. of PT even said today she’s really impressed with the progress I’ve made. I can almost rotate a full 90 degrees left and right. Not without pain of course, but the rotation is there nonetheless.

My range of motion is almost back to normal, still with some surgical pain, but I can look to the ceiling and I can look to my toes without the back-stabbing pain between my shoulder blades. I’m able to stand at the sink or the stove to do daily tasks. Though I get fatigued, it’s mostly about my recovery. After all, surgery WAS only a little over a month ago. My scar is healing nicely and my neck doesn’t sound hollow anymore when I tap on it. For the most part my headaches are gone except for the ones I get from the muscles surrounding my head, they’re no longer on the inside. It’s the same muscles we use to make our ears wiggle and our eyebrows raise. 

I guess I didn’t think this surgery through as much as I maybe should have. Those muscles and all the other ones they moved out of the way were traumatized in a major way. The skin at the incision is numb and will be for some time as expected. My chin is numb as well. I’m not really sure if that’s from the surgery or from the neck brace. The brace holds me pretty immobile. There’s pressure from trying to drop my head down but not being able to because the brace is so sturdy. The pressure has put a strain on my teeth especially my molars, YES, I still have all my own teeth. I sometimes loosen the brace so I can get some relief from that pressure. I haven’t slept flat in over forty days, let alone on my side where I’m most comfortable. Along with them moving my esophagus, wind pipe, and voice box out of the way, they also stretched my jaw muscles and tongue muscles. And of course lets not forget the trapezoids and all the other muscles attached to make everything move right. For the most part, there’s stretched muscle pain, and still some burning on my left side. That’s where I’d been so tight for so long that now the muscles are loosening up and they’re hurting as they learn to relax.

But as the first few weeks have gone by and the swelling has gone way down. I’m left with a reality that’s been almost the toughest thing in my life to face. I can’t sing. And Amanda can’t tell me if I will ever be able to the way I used to. I’ve never been more devastated. I know that whatever I do now, it’s on me, totally and completely on me. There’s maybe a few thousand people in the world that have faced what I’m facing now. Entertainers who have not been able to go back to what they love, singing. The most famous that comes to mind is Julie Andrews. Not that I would ever compare myself with her talent, but I always considered I could hold my own.

 As far back as me being a six year old girl, I’ve always known I wanted to sing on stage. Music’s always been a huge part of my life. Even when I was grounded and sent to my room, I would sing with my 45′s playing on my phonograph, biding my time until I was ungrounded. I was elated when I got to sing on stage when I was in seventh grade. And then when I went to John F. Kennedy high school I got to sing on stage at the Packard Music Hall for Fiddlesticks. That was JFK’s talent show and I sang to a packed crowd of three thousand, not once, but three times! I can’t describe to you in words the euphoria I feel while I’m singing. It’s a feeling like no other. So, to have known that feeling and having given up hope so many years ago, I resigned myself that I’d never sing again. I thought that part of my life was over. It wasn’t until last October after my first surgery that I discovered I could actually sing again. My heart was filled with a joy matched to my joy of having Brian.

 I enjoyed it with my whole heart. Silly me to even entertain the idea that in my world where there are endless possibilities, I could maybe one day sing with Andrea Bocelli. My mom always said your days are made better by your daydreams, so that’s been my daydream since.

 I’d lay awake at night healing thinking of what it would be like to stand next to Andrea Bocelli and sing The Impossible Dream, the same song I sung on stage when I was in the seventh grade. David Foster at the keyboard would lilt out the tune for him and I to sing as a duet. I love singing duets. When I was in the local Up With People chapter in high school, I sung with a young man who had a wonderful baritone voice. He went on to sing with the Texas Opera Company and later on to New York City. Those duets were electrifying. I sang a duet with a classmate of mine during my senior year. It was Tonight from West Side Story, that performance for me was magical! I hit every note, every entrance and on key! I thought I was in heaven.

 After some years had passed, I was pregnant with Brian and Fiddlesticks was being presented for their 25^th Anniversary. I was seven months pregnant and Christopher Columbus director of Gremlins and Harry Potter fame was the MC. He went to school at JFK as well and he and his wife had just had a baby girl. He came back stage just before introducing me and asked me if I knew what I was having, I told him yes, but we weren’t telling anyone yet. He chided me into telling him, promising me he wouldn’t say anything, then promptly went out and introduced me and told everyone I was having a boy. I still have a bone to pick with him about that if I ever see him again!

 As it is for a lot of people, music has been my secret companion during the darkest days of my life. And for a lot of years was missing because some people in my inner circle couldn’t stand to hear my singing. They saw how happy it made me and that just wasn’t going to happen while they were around. I would sing when they were gone and looked out the window to stop before they heard me on their return.

Secretly I made a recording in a studio after saving up enough grocery money to pay for it. I used that recording in a Walkman device for Brian’s incubator when he was born and separated from me in the NICU at another hospital. The nurses played it for him so he would know my voice. Then, I quietly gave in to the toll my body was experiencing from slowly collapsing. 

I think it would have been better if my doctor had done the second surgery first and then the lower back. At least I’d have never known I could sing again. To have had the jubilation of renewing my dreams of singing once again and even adding the dream of singing with Andrea Bocelli to my bucket list, and then to have it taken away….let’s just say my heart hurts in a way I didn’t think it could.

 So to your question, Am I healing?, the answer is yes, my body is healing. But my heart tells a different story. Yet I’m no quitter. I’ve fought many fights. And if this one is all up to me…. I’m going to give it my all in the same manner I gave Brian my all when he needed to reach his dreams to be whole.

If I can’t sing in six months the way I once did at Christmas, I’ll know it’s not because I didn’t give it my best shot. Whitney Houston had a song “One Moment in Time.” That was the original song I was to sing at Fiddlesticks 25. A few lines in that song go something like, “Give me one moment in time, when I’m more than I thought I could be, When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away, And the answers are all up to me, Give me one moment in time, When I’m racing with destiny, Then in that one moment in time I will feel eternity, You’re a winner, for a lifetime, If you seize that one moment in time.”   THIS IS MY MOMENT!

 Here’s my plan. Amanda gave me some exercises for my jaw and mouth and tounge. She assures me she will be able to give me exercises to bring my muscles back better than they were before in my shoulders and neck if I’m willing to put in the time and effort. I”m gonna have the strongest mouth in Las Vegas…. and that’s saying something! LOL

 As for my voice muscles she warns me not to overdo it at the beginning, to take it slow. She seems to think I’ll know within six months or so if I’ll be able to hit any notes, let alone the high ones I was singing at Christmastime. It’s going to take a lot of work on my part and I need to be brutally honest with myself if I think I’m pushing too hard or not enough. I’ll have to learn to take a break and rest when I need to. Not many people will be able to guide me through this. At least not without paying wheelbarrow loads of money for voice lessons and coaching. That’s just not in my budget. My doctors get paid first. But, with God’s help and my work, I should know something one way or another before the years’ end.

 I have a doctor’s appointment soon, I will know more about when I can start singing… this wait is excruciating!

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 These are emails I sent to a couple of my friends that I regret sending… I’m not one to be so down to send something like this out…. I need to exude hope… at any cost…. It was a bad decision to tell them about what was happening….

   Great to hear from you! I’m doing much better each day. I started my rehab on Friday and am quite sore at the moment…. no pain, no gain…. so I’ll suck it up and move on. I can hardly wait to get out of this brace!
   I feel like the Bride of Frankenstein with it and the wires from the Bone Growth Stimulator! Little kids at Walmart come in front of my buggy to stare… :>{   Good news is that I think I get it off on the 25th when I see Dr. Smith!

   The flowers you guys sent me were soooo cool! The bucket even was painted purple! They lasted a loooooong time too! THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH! 

   This healing has brought some real emotional days for me. I didn’t realize I wouldn’t be able to sing for Easter, or for the next 6 months or so…. it really set me back emotionally, you know how high I was riding on the fact I was able to sing again. But, as always, I’m trying to pick myself up, dust myself off, and patiently wait for the throat muscles to heal enough for me to do some scales. My Dr of PT said I may never sing again or I may have a change in vocal range… she said it’ll be a crap shoot….THIS IS JUST NOT ACCEPTABLE!!! My heart is really hurting over this… but the good news is…. I have none of my old pain! My surgical pain is lessening each day I’m in therapy so for now… I will endure.

  Your care, friendship and concern mean a great deal to me, that is what you can do for me right now. I think about all the good things that you folks made possible for me when the going gets tough. It’s a great place to escape. Thanks for the memories.

Anyway, take care of you and yours and thanks for thinking of me,

hugs,

Kathleen

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   I don’t want to rain on the parade but you’re right, this surgery has been a real challenge, especially this wonderful neck brace, but the biggest challenge has been mentally, for me… the healing is going just great! HOWEVER, I guess I didn’t think this through as much as I should have. I just wanted to be completely pain free. It seems I overlooked asking just “how” this operation was going to be performed… I mean I knew he was going in from the front, but what I didn’t know was that he had to disturb my vocal cords and stretch them along with all my other neck muscles.

   Well, it terrified me the first and second week when I could barely breath and speak, and then it hit me like nothing I’ve ever been hit with….I can’t sing any more! OMG! This is probably the worst case of mental disappointment for me than anything I’ve ever experienced. I can’t sing, it’s that simple. And yet, that’s probably the most complex problem I’ve ever had. I was able to accept it the first time. Yes, I was disappointed but I really couldn’t muster the sound because I had no breath. BUT, to have experienced what I did at Christmas, and then lose it, well, this has just been devastating!

   As soon as I get my hard collar off, I’m gonna start working on my scales. I can get to “so” in the song, Do Re Mi in the shower. My PT doctor tells me I may never recover my high notes, the one’s I sang at Christmas, or I may not be able to fully recover from this vocally at all. She says it’s a crap shoot. It would probably take a voice coach and singing lessons, more money than we have to shell out. I know what I’m dealing with now so the recovery pain in my neck is the least of my worries… I’m just sad to think I’ll never have the chance to sing with Andrea Bocelli!   It could’ve happened… at least in the world I created to get through all this! Now, I’m not so sure.

   But I’m no quiter, and I’ll keep trying cause that’s all I know how to do. I’ll keep doing my scales and singing in the shower and when my husband’s not around. (that way he can’t make fun of me) I keep praying my novena to St. Jude the patron saint of the impossible and, maybe, just MAYBE… it could happen! My heart just hurts, that’s all.

   And shame on me for being so selfish. There are people all over the world who are suffering worse things than I can even imagine, and here I am licking my wounds over something that, to a lot of people, may seem petty.  I’ll learn to deal with this, it’s just gonna take some time.

   So I’ll take my ACDF and do my ABCDEFG scales and see what comes out of this M - O – U – T – H!  LOL

(Now, aren’t you sorry you asked? LOL) I miss talking with you all now and then, it was something nice to look forward to. You are all on my heart.

hugs,

Kathleen

It was not the best move I ever made to be such a whiner, but it is what it is. I’ll let you know now that this in not all, there’s more…. I’ll post again in the next few days with the REST OF THE STORY….. STAY TUNED….

until then just remember to take care of you and yours,

hugs,

Kathleen