Andy eat and smile again

Those of you that know Andy will know that we don’t often ask others for help. You may also recognise that he’s been away from the music scene and people in general since about October 2022. Times have been so difficult and stressful to say the least. We have somehow made it to this point, together, and are asking all of you to read this and see if you can help make our lives better in a way, we may not be able to do alone, for some time, without your kindness.

In 2022, Andy had to have a blood transfusion due to his body not making enough blood. After convincing him enough was enough and he needed to see a doctor about his mood, anger and physical weight loss, pale skin and stomach bowel issues, the doctor did a blood test on the Tuesday.

At the time Andy was not eating enough and his haemoglobin value was 68 when it should have been 120-170. His doctor rang at 11pm that evening and told us to get him to A&E now. When asked if “we could go to the hospital tomorrow or did we need to go right way?”, we were told “no he must go now, or he could be dead by morning”. I presented his numbers at reception of A&E. Andy, who hates medical environments was terrified.

When we visited A&E after a blood result from his doctor, they were shocked he was still standing. To be frank they thought it must be wrong and didn’t take us very seriously as we waited in the waiting room. At admission to A&E his BPM was a mere 38. The nurse was very blasé and went to get a second blood pressure monitor, taking about 20 mins, believing it to be broken. Tutting at the fact he passed out on the floor “dramatically”. In that moment, I wasn’t the best girlfriend and even told him to get up and “stop being embarrassing”.

Without advocating for Andy, and intervention by a wonderful male nurse who took over and repeated his blood results and summoned a doctor, I’m not sure he would be here. They simply couldn’t work out where his blood had gone and began transfusing donated blood. They thought it was stomach issues, as he had had stomach pain, such as ulcers. This was basically Andy’s body screaming to get help.

The lack of food going into his body and most importantly iron, he wasn’t creating enough red blood cells or oxygenating correctly. The shape of the blood cells he was making weren’t correct, making it difficult to carry oxygen and affecting his entire body. In about 6 months Andy had lost 6 Stone.

Fast forward to 2024 and the cause of all this, his teeth.

Andy has been suffering gradual and slowly increasing pain with his teeth and chronic migraines which have been insufferable. Its left him unable to go out without fear of being in too much pain to cope with a social interaction where he can scream and shout from the agony of it.

Those of you who know Andy know he’s suffered from Cluster headaches most of his life. This can often leave him incapacitated and unable to do normal things for months at a time. We now wonder if this has been linked to his teeth for a long time (not sure).

Andy has a terrible dental phobia. He describes it as irrational, but he would “rather be buried alive with spiders”. We worked through this extreme phobia, to a point where he was able to see a dentist in Market Rasen under sedation and unaware of what was happening and have a tooth out at a time as it gave him issues and pain. Mainly because it was do so or give up and give in all together. This was at a cost of around £500 per tooth which we simply didn’t have at times. It quickly left us skint even though we were both working (we all see that cost-of-living crisis). Once the immediate dental work required was complete, we tried to improve his food intake and get that iron in also supplementing with vitamins.

The problem with this is it left Andy with few teeth to eat with at all. Neither left- or right-hand jaw have both upper and lower meeting teeth to chew with. Everytime we built him up physically and then the teeth began to hurt in a new way again.

As such his health and mental well being, alongside, began to fail him again.

You can imagine the emotional, depressive impact this has had on Andy, the inability to socialise and inconsistency in energy levels that being unable to eat/function would have on a person. He has become a recluse and doesn’t really see anyone unless they pop round and visit in his home situation.

To try and get some help, some hope, and to do something practical, we began researching dentists that could work with Andy to get us a solution and our life back. We needed one who understood how bad this dental phobia was, how he’d rather die that see a dentist at times and stop this massive bloke who isn’t scared of going on stage in front of hundreds of people, or traversing Australia alone, but would irrationally pass out by taking about teeth or being in a doctors/dental surgery.

We have found HOPE for the first time in a long time in the form of Yorkshire Dental suite in Hessle. We visited Dr Sharn at their practise in Hessle last week. We cried all night in relief that someone would treat us so well and with such consideration and that there is a solution.

The practise doesn’t even SMELL like a dentist. They have methods of sedation in house, specialists who know their trade, CT and XRAY specialist equipment and everything needed on site.

Most importantly, Dr Sharn took the first 30 minutes to go through history with Andy to help him be comfortable before even touching him and to see what the issues were. The broken in half front tooth he pulled out himself being the least of the issues.

Having done this, he did a 3d head CT and found Andy had severe periodontal disease. He told us that the bone had shrunk so severely that the teeth were barely in the jaw, most especially those at the back were broken or were too badly gone to fill and were going to drop out one by one over time anyway. The holes on the front of his visible teeth may or may not have been from brace glue in the past but the infection was beyond being able to keep the teeth from falling out long term.

The stuff of nightmares being told all your teeth will fall out, isn’t it? Well, we are now faced with this reality.

1) Agonising pain as they gradually fall out.

2) No teeth at all

We are faced with this because on the 27th of Jan 2025, they are going to quote the bill for taking out the teeth and replacing them in some fashion. We cried all night as the hope went away.

All on four teeth fitted back in on posts is £27,000. Even to have the teeth removed and dentures is estimated at £6-7k which we simply can’t get anytime soon to get Andy out of pain and back to a normal life to earn any more money.

Credit isn’t an option, we simply don’t have the credit score, no one will allow us to borrow it, even the bad ones. Family don’t simply have that much they could even lend us. The NHS, we can’t seem to get access to care with sedation. 111 would only offer an appointment for a tooth extraction in an emergency, and we’ve been on the waiting list for an NHS dentist for 2 years. Even if we COULD get on with an NHS practice, they don’t do sedation. Would you like 17 teeth taken out with a phobia or the dentist and needles and be awake for the whole thing?

We feel alone, let down, like Andy doesn’t matter, that our lives don’t matter, that no one cares after how long this has gone on for, the system is broken. We are just a number, and this is meant to be our lives.

If you have suggestions, we’d be willing to take them, please be kind before judging us, you’ve no idea the dark places this has took us to.

Andy and I were talking about how, on the music scene in Grimsby, we all used to give each other 20p or whatever change we had on a Saturday, to afford a gig ticket to our local winter gardens, mainly to ensure none of our friends were left out and everyone had enough to go together.

So, if you can see it in your hearts to spare a couple of quid, for a favour we’ve done for you, a repayment of a drink we’ve bought, or an ear we’ve lent over the years. If you’re kind enough to forgo your morning coffee today, maybe you can give us our lives back.

If we can get the money, we can have this done as soon as the 2nd week of February. We simply wouldn’t be able to come up with the money that fast no matter what we did work wise. If we need to, we will live in agony for another 6 months and save up, but we are just absolutely done and need some faith in humanity from somewhere. Life and money for teeth or pain and suffering where no one cares.

Spare a couple of quid?

Andy would like me to add that, if you need paying back any penny you donate, let us know and we will work out a repayment for every £1 even if it takes 20 years to do so. I put this up begrudgingly because of the judgement I feel we will get but we don’t know what else to do.

Remo-nation Baby

Help us out

Love Andy and Becca

(If someone wants to buy spare speakers, bins and music equipment let me know. They don’t seem to sell on the marketplace. lol)