Lessons on Singing and Trakes

Ok, I'm going to spell trake wrong in this blog because the correct spelling does not look right. So if no one has any questions, we can continue.

Before my trake surgery a couple years back, I had the craziest question growing like a tumor on my brain -- will I still be able to sing after this?

Lets take a detour from the story for a moment for some backstory. I started writing and ocassionaly performing hip-hop lyrics at the age of seventeen. Part way through my softmore year at St. Andrew's in Laurinburg North Carolina, my lungs were getting weak, too weak. This meant, after a pneumonia and a hospital stay, that my out-of-State college career was over.

During this life-transition I made one of another kind. A transition from rap to rock. The band and I both noticed, the Summer leading up to the surgery, that it was getting harder and harder for me to belt out lyrics. Naturally horrified, I thought, with a trake that'll really be it! My singing days were surely numbered.

Or were they?

The recovery after the surgery was hell, taking all of three months of going in and out of the E.R., getting MERSA and a hole in the lining of each lung. I was told two weeks, ha, what a joke! I couldn't talk at first and having a cuffed trake didn't help either. Without explaining it in detail -- cuffed equals no sing, un-cuffed equals sing.

After re-learning how to talk and getting a cuffless trake, I must say that singing has become much easier. So after all the pain and hospital stays, I'd say getting a trake was the best decision I ever made! It saved my life and my voice.