Genesis

by Tom Colquitt, DDS  

The Pulmo-venture started as a joke. Perhaps a rant of sorts, but certainly a joke-song. The joke highlighting the ever confusing if not crushing world for our patients and the predicament we found ourselves in as their dental providers. Our patients with breathing disordered sleep and an AHI of less than 5 received no allowable treatment from the medical/health insurance providers, and these people were sick. Very sick.

Snorin’ heartburn pissin’ sweatin’ on my face
Couldn’t get to sleep last night.
Woke up feelin’ ‘zactly like I ran a race
Nothin’ seems is goin’ right.
I’m Back in The UARS, boy!
You know my life is a mess, boy!

Patients with Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome (UARS)

Knowing our limitations in a medically based system, we dentists knew these people needed much more than a pat on the head and a tear sheet recommending melatonin and bedtime rules. We needed to address gaps in the dental- medical health system, educate others on what could be done, and get treatment options that could potentially save lives.

Back then, being blessed/cursed with a longstanding practice of ranting about things that troubled me, I wrote the song sharing the peril of a human being suffering from UARS in a medical system actively trying to erase that term. It captured the existential plight for our patients and the dance we “Airway Centered Dentists” were stepping to, on a floor that was as uneven as it was slippery, given the scrutiny from our medical colleagues.

Set to the tune of the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR,” the song became an anthem of sorts. A public health crisis/acknowledgement of the gaps and breaks that left our patients in the dust.

Went to see my doc, said “What you gotta do…
Need to go and take this test
Sleep Doc he says “Fella, I cannot help you.”
It is not OSA, it’s UARS.
I’m back in the UARS, my health insurance’s a mess, boy!

The song was also a bridge. A bridge to needed collaborators, both clinical and musical. Like any anthem, the song needed a band to promulgate the message. Much later, a murder of musical crows would fulfill that hope.

In the past 25 years I’ve learned more and have met more wonderful new people than in the first 30 years of my restorative practice. Keith Thornton, Mark Cruz, Barry Raphael, Bill Hang, Kevin Boyd, Scott Neish, Roger Price, Ted Belfor, Darin Ward, and so many other thought leaders. Colleagues. Mentors. Friends.

Turns out some of them are also rather good closet musicians. Barry’s a bassist. Scott’s a guitarist. Darin sings and plays a mean blues harp. Between our dental airway machinations to change the world, we found ourselves conspiring to get together in Shreveport so we could record “UARS” in my music room.

Six years pass. There are lots of conferences, lots of talk, and the needle begins to move. But there is no music in Shreveport.

Then, Steve Lamberg happens.

An avid dental sleep clinician with the jovial gait of an impresario, Steve hosts an annual spring meeting on Long Island called PAANNY. For the event in May 2022, he asked me to give a talk. With James Nestor as Keynote, it feels like a culmination. Nestor has single-handedly landed our decades of clinical airway investigations on the proverbial layperson’s map with his book Breath; PAANNY promises and proved to be a come-to-the-river sort of meeting, and the launching pad of The Pulmonauts, the name we chose for our band, from Nestor’s book. Airway explorers. On a Mission.

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”  – JFK

The call to step into airway dentistry has not been dissimilar.

We jumped at the chance to do “UARS” and other “airway message” songs with rewritten lyrics decrying mouth breathing and chronic fatigue. “Doctor, My Nose!” “Every Breath You Take!” “I’m Only Sleeping!”

But: no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

The band met two days before PAANNY in Barry’s garage in Clifton, New Jersey. With coffee-stained, pen-scrawled cheat sheets in hand, all five of us slogged away at the other reality of being in a rock band: unpacking and repacking heavy equipment. Our song list was equally demanding. Before we know it, the hours spent together felt like we’re not in Barry’s garage, but in the Lion’s Den of the creative process. If you’ve ever tried to pull anything creative off with little time, you know the pressure that swells inside. Add that to my own condition of congestive heart failure and a burning desire to do something monumental, and you know where this story is going…

Fact is, I’ve been at this game before. The music game.

First on my own and then with my band, “Tom & The Cats.” The music was a calling that dental school in the 1960s didn’t quite return. I will never forget the first time I heard The Beatles. I Saw Her Standing There came over those radio waves like a siren cutting through the heat of the night. I bought four album copies the next day so my band could all learn it.

Cut to: Barry’s garage.

Nestor is a drummer, too. He agreed to join us in the name of airway exploration, and it became apparent we’re missing a key ingredient: time.

Time is required: it’s how a band gets to know each other, hear each other, trust each other. Our shared airway mission isn’t enough. The pressure in my chest mounted, knowing we were stepping on stage the following night.

The smile of a tall red-haired woman is all I needed to get through this launch. I Saw Her Standing There. I met Samantha Weaver in line at the hotel. She threw her proverbial arms around me and enthusiastically shared that she is going to be singing with us on stage. Good move, Barry! She’ll go on to relish that first gig, but from my perspective, we crash like Hindenburg.

Even with a niche celebrity author and a touch of glam to lift the vocals, the reality of tech breakdowns made it near impossible to hear each other over the din of cocktail chatter. Starting songs is an adventure without a countdown! Nestor exited the stage early to get ready for his more important gig, The Keynote. Spinal Tap for Dentists isn’t his jam. It left us sans drummer and with a lot of improvisational vocals on the part of Darin and Sam, who thankfully were up for it. Remember my heart condition? I returned home dehydrated and filled with fluid in my lungs. Upon doctor’s orders, it took weeks to recover.

September 2022

Fall has arrived in Shreveport. The angle of the sun has softened its harsh glare. I’m tossing the ball for my dog, Bella, when I get a call.

Barry: Tom, you ready for this?

Me: Hell, no…

Barry: We’re doing it. Again.

Me: Pulmonauts? You gotta be *%#@ing me.

Barry: Nope. It’s happening. You in?

I think about it for a few days. Mostly about that missing ingredient we did not have before: time.

On subsequent zoom calls, Barry and the mighty Jen Kirkham work to sell their vision: a dinner-theatre style oeuvre performance for Collaboration Cures 2023 in Orlando, Florida. Never mind that the 10 of us all live in different parts of the country. Plus, we have new bandmates. Even with the luxury of time, how the hell are we going to pull this off? (Enter the Lion’s Den.)

What happens over the next twelve months is nothing short of a miracle.

We pull it off.

10 remote musicians who meet only twice in person requires more than time. Turns out that missing ingredient is collaboration.

As I get up on stage in front of the crowd of 500 in Orlando that following September, my heart has other plans.

I’ve been holed up in my hotel room for two days, barely able to walk, talk, or eat. I’ve got a fever, and the blinds are drawn. Bandmates arrive at my door, fear in their eyes. They know my season could be coming to a close. The angle of the sun has shifted.

Dave McCarty – dear friend, MD, and our appointed band Mojo Coordinator – knows that if I can only get on stage for “UARS,” that will be enough.

Lights, Camera, Action!

My bandmates are now deeply bonded to the whole of our system. With one man down, each player beams energy into my soul, between glances, hugs, smiles, and the act of playing music together. This translates into me singing the hell out of “UARS,” tears streaming down my cheeks by the closing act, “This is Me.”

What I did not realize is that I wrote that anthem to save others. That song ended up saving me.