Getting Better All The Time...

Sun, Jul 5, 2015

When I moved to Las Vegas I experienced some incredible things and it made me a far better singer and performer (I'll get into these things in future posts). When I returned to Boston, I was ready to take what I had learned out west and bring it forward. What I never expected was to be sidelined for over four years.
Here's what happened...

Shortly after my return, I took ill but had no idea what was wrong. I underwent quite a few medical tests, some of them very serious. There were some very tense periods of waiting for test results, and I was, in a fashion, relieved to find that my illness was due not to a life threatening disease, but the result of a major bone infection in my upper and lower jaws due to complications from a crown job I had done almost a decade earlier.

I visited one of the best dentists on the east cast and was shocked to hear that the extent of the bone loss dictated a complete and total dental reconstruction.

What happened? It turns out that my original crown job was not sealed properly, allowing bacteria to slowly work its way under the caps. The result? Rip out everything and start from scratch.

The problem was that I was looking at procedures that would cost well over $100,000. In stepped my good friend, Dr. Michael Scherr, a brilliant prosthodontist who took pity on me and agreed to help me out. The project started on June 10th, 2011, when, in one sitting, I had 27 teeth extracted. The only word I can use is medieval. Imagine going to sleep with teeth (albeit crumbling teeth) and waking up 90 minutes later with not a single tooth in your head, and a set of temporary dentures that felt like a set of tupperware shoved in your mouth. I keenly remember trying to swallow some pain meds in the recovery room. It took me 20 minutes just to get a single pill down. I had to re-learn how to swallow, something everyone takes for granted. It was nightmarish. What followed was about 10 oral surgeries, multiple implants placements, several revisions to the temporary teeth, lots of healing time, etc.

What is crucial to understand is this process took me out of my life in almost every way. I couldn't sing, couldn't perform, couldn't eat solid food at all. Everything I ate had to be processed through a blender, resulting in mush. Wearing the temps was painful, uncomfortable, fatiguing, and just plain shitty. The light at the end of pearly whites are finally in place and just five months ago I was able to eat, sing and perform again. The adjustment period was extremely short, and now I am finally feeling and looking like myself again.

So, hello, world. I'm back and ready to make up for lost time! Thanks for taking me back!

4 comments