When I subtitled my blog: Just Your Bassic Blog About Sax, Music, Life, & How They Come Together, I did so without much conscious effort. I typed out the subtitle without really thinking about it, but it just seemed to me to make sense somehow. Well I could never have predicted how sax & life would intersect in my world today. It was actually very strange, but potentially also very promising.
For nearly the last 4 months I have been without a neurologist, since the one who was providing my care, moved to another province to take a teaching position at a university. Because my neurological problems are rather complex, my last neurologist had recommended someone in particular, but this new doctor had not yet got her private practice set up. (This new neurologist was moving from a university hospital position to private practice.) Well today I finally had an appointment with this new neurologist.
Playing sax has been an extremely painful experience over the past 2 years since I became ill, because a big part of my problems are neuropathic (nerve) pains in my face, that actually get worse when I play horn. The smaller the horn, the greater the resistance & pressure back into my head, hence the greater the pain is.
So since this all started, I’ve pretty much limited myself to tenor and only recently had the strength & stamina to start playing some bari again. Over the past 2 years my neurologist has controlled the pain through a cocktail of drugs, but the cocktail needs regular tweaking to maintain its efficacy.
Today, as I tried to describe the problems I experience with resistance in smaller horns and altissimo notes to yet another doctor, who means well, but won’t get it, this new neurologist very quietly says, “I play saxophone”. I say “Really? What kind?”. “Alto,” she replies. I breath a sigh of relief, and think, even if she’s not a great player, (but for all I know, she is) it doesn’t really matter.
With only a limited understanding of the bores of saxophones, and the back pressures exerted on the player, and the potential for increasing a player’s intracranial pressure, this doc is light years beyond where the last 4 neuros I saw were. They all meant well, but having never played a wind instrument, none of them understood the mechanics of them: nor had any of them had the time to research the area.
Yes, today was indeed a day I could never have foreseen. Sometimes Sax, Music, & Life, Come Together in the strangest & most unpredictable ways.
After getting an email yesterday from a friend who read this post, I realized that there was a sentence that was a little unclear, so I rewrote it this morning.
My new neurologist opened a private practice after taking leave from her position at a university teaching hospital. She is not a new graduate in neurology.
My friend thought I had a brand new doctor looking after me now. That’s not the case at all. She’s experienced, & in the prime of her career.