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Sounds like Mr. Turner has made a remarkable recovery -- I'm *very* glad to hear that! It is one of the worst things that can happen to a brass player.

This Saturday will be 16 years since I woke up with the right side of my face paralyzed (no warning signs before that at all), and I'm still gradually recovering from it. After the first 6 months, I was back up to a 2 octave usable (& maximum) range -- pre-Bell's, it had been 4 usable/5 max -- and it stayed at 2 octaves for the next 10 years. The damaged nerves finally started healing again after that (slowly and fitfully), and now I'm back to 3 usable & almost 4 max, which is a very welcome improvement!

I know what you mean about doing weird things to keep going -- the first three or four months I had to hold my right cheek in with my left hand (very awkward!) to keep it from "pooching out" and destroying the sound, and I used Chap-Stick as an "embouchure sealant" to minimize the air leakage out the right side for several years. Ya do whatcha gotta do ...

I hope none of you get it! It can be coped with, and -- in my case -- it forced me to concentrate on other aspects of my playing than range (primarily tone and phrasing), but I wouldn't wish it on anyone. If any of you have had it & want to talk about it privately, send me a PM -- I'd be glad to do so.

Bell's Palsey hit me all at once. We had a six night gig at a Rodeway Inn in Mobile, Alabama. We took our first break and I sat down to visit with a sax player I used to work with.
I had a bad cold but could not take time off.
Starting the second set, I blew the first note on my trumpet and nothing came out. I had a total blowout air leak on the left side of my mouth. Then I noticed my left eye would not shut and numbness on the left side of my face.
I thought I was having a stroke but my sax player buddy reassured me it was Bell's Palsey since he once had a mild case. My doctor agreed.
I booked the band without me into a Holiday inn at Dauphin Island and took three months off and learned how to paint houses.
My high range never came back on trumpet. I lost what I had above high C and could only manage the occasional trumpet solo for a few minutes at a time.
It was 10 years before I found my way back to tuba. I have no problem hitting Eb above the staff all night long or the low (money) range. I only get blisters if I blatt too much
toots.

Just a general warning for those who live where I do, and northeast from there: Lyme Disease can cause Bell's Palsy (and just about everything else). Lyme Disease is a bacterial infection that comes from the bite of an infected deer tick. Deer ticks in the nymphal stage are the size of the head of a pin. If you live in an area with reported cases, and if you ever see deer or field mice where you live, you'll probably get bitten by one of those ticks.

If you do, don't screw around. You'll have to beat up your doctor to do anything, but it's worth it. Antibiotics started in the first week or two after the bite are 100% effective. But unless you have the tick or see a rash (which doesn't happen with everyone by any means), by the time a blood test will show Lyme it's too late to knock it out easily. The antibodies take too long to appear. If the bacteria are allowed to take up extensive residence in your body, it's much more difficult to get rid of them and their effects.

Rick "in a Lyme epidemic area, currently taking antibiotics" Denney

the elephant wrote:

Rick Denney wrote:You'll have to beat up your doctor to do anything…

That is really damned sad, Rick. It is not like this is a new thing. It has been in the public eye now for over 20 years.

This is not intended to be political: If doctors and the insurance industry hate the idea of nationalized health care, they have only themselves to blame.

Rick "Western Blot blood tests are expensive, but Doxycycline really isn't" Denney

I have a trombone friend who has had to deal with this four times now... one of them while he was in undergrad. He has struggled back every time.

tubatooter1940 wrote: I have no problem hitting Eb above the staff all night long...

That’s where the money are! I guess there are a lot of people willing to pay you well for not doing so.

Klaus

Carroll wrote:I have a trombone friend who has had to deal with this four times now... one of them while he was in undergrad. He has struggled back every time.

I admire his persistence (or "stick-to-it-iveness" as my parents always called it)! The goal *is* worth the struggle. Best wishes to him for continued success.

I'm even more worried about focal dystonia.

Gene Pokorny's predecessor in St Louis quit playing due to Bell's, IIRC. Or, at the time, he did.

Re focal dystonia, I consider myself a non-medical expert about it.

There is a personality type associated with FD: the perfectionist type (I think all musicians are perfectionists) who in addition, simply will not take no for an answer when the body is struggling with difficult technique. The people I've seen who get dystonia have a very strong mental focus on their playing; and, in addition, when things start to go haywire, instead of backing off and taking a break, they intensify their efforts. That causes the catastrophe. BTW, I define FD as your body doing something different from what you're intending to do: that is, you don't intend for your jaw to chew up and down, or your head to wag back and forth, or your corners to move wildly about, or your lips or tongue to lock in place. They do this without your conscious volition because the nerve pathways have gotten all screwed up. So when you intend to play, the wrong data gets sent down the nerve pathway and you get that unintended result.

That said, there are people who had it VERY badly who have recovered. Dave Vining at Northern AZ U is one; trombone professor. He had the "lip lock" type (their are two types of manifestation that I've seen...the locked-up type and the unwanted-motion type. Both are FD.) and because he was pro and not that old, he felt he had to do what it took to recover. He worked with Jan Kagarice of NTU, who has helped many pros recover. There names are not public for obvious reasons. I've talked to Dave on the phone and found that we had independently come up with very similar language to describe FD and also had the same basic ideas on how to recover from it.

At 60 this month, I don't have the drive to re-learn how to play brasses, and I'm on my way out. Too many times I found myself scrambling during a concert to find a work-around to get the right sound to come out the bell. I'm moving to the oboe section next fall, and hopefully I've learned enough from my brass-related FD to avoid it on double reeds. But only time will tell....since I didn't get FD on horn until I'd been playing ten years, I figure maybe by the time I'm 70 if I get FD on oboe I won't really care all that much. Assuming I live that long!

Oh, WRT Bell's palsy, it might be worth an internet search on alpha lipoic acid. Interesting stuff and your MD likely doesn't know about it.

MA

MaryAnn wrote:BTW, I define FD as your body doing something different from what you're intending to do: that is, you don't intend for your jaw to chew up and down, or your head to wag back and forth, or your corners to move wildly about, or your lips or tongue to lock in place. They do this without your conscious volition because the nerve pathways have gotten all screwed up. So when you intend to play, the wrong data gets sent down the nerve pathway and you get that unintended result.

Bell's Palsy, like focal dystonioa, has a medical definition. It is a neurological condition which causes misfiring of muscles. The definition is very general and there is no 'test' to determine if you have F/D.

I think it misrepresents F/D so say that it causes your body to do "something different from what you're intending to do" and follow it with examples which are not indicative of the result of F/D. The best representation would be to say that it inhibits or diminishes the motor function which you intend. For instance, Leon Fleisher's right hand did not mimic some other hand function when he tried to play, it simply could not function with the speed and accuracy to play the piano. His actual symptoms, if I am correct, varied from contractions to extension to simple stiffness.

There is a lot of misinformation on F/D, a BBS is not necessarily the best place to fine what you need to know.

bloke wrote:...
Several years later, when working on some of the passages in the John Williams Tuba Concerto, I noticed that I would (again, much faster than the indicated tempo - but at the tempo at which I decided to ultimately perform it) work up some long "rips" of notes in the third movement perfectly, lose accuracy, and it would degrade from there. I suppose this is related to the "focal dystonia" of which people speak. ...

Luckily for you, this is not a description of focal dystonia. I write this so that the tubists who read it will not think, "Oh, I've got focal dystonia," when things don't work for them.

A symptom of focal dystonia might be that you could play all of the described licks on one day and on the next day (and all of the days after) you would not be able to predict which note was going to come out, if any, when you tried to play a single middle C. Your F/D symptom would be total loss of the ability to play the licks at all.

F/D is not a slight degradation of skills, it is usually complete and often sudden loss of the motor control to accomplish that skill. All the more devastating because of the lack of warning.

Bell's is horrible, but at least it usually has a recovery which can be hoped for.

FD doesn't, necessarily. We all know names of top level tubists who've quit due to FD.

There's no real cure for it, as MA can attest. Some have tried botox injections, or other maybe/maybenot treatments, some quit playing, some keep on trying.

One guy I know kept his orchestra gig, but had a sub do a lot of the shows. He also kept teaching, despite his greatly reduced playing ability. ******GREAT SUPPORT from the school and the orchestra*****

He finally left the orchestra after 10 or so years of this, kept on plugging and trying to get things back. He finally realized his high chops are fine, or almost so, and did a recital, with great results apparently. He's still teaching, strong studio as he's ever had, but he's not nearly the player he used to be.

It hurts to see stories like that relatively up close. It's no easier to know of those who gave up playing in public completely.

I had bells palsy a couple of summers back. It was pretty bad: I would even struggly drinking out of a cup.
Fortunately, I recovered well and came back playing better than ever.
I've had no problems with it since.