<div>Hi everybody. My name is Richard Edwards, and I used to be the songwriter and frontman for a band called Margot &amp; The Nuclear So and So's. Now, I am the songwriter and frontman for Richard Edwards. As most of you (I think...) know, I came down with a rotten case of C. diff a decade ago. I didn't know what it was or that I was dying when I got on the Margot school bus to embark on the East Coast tour for our album *Sling Shot To Heaven*. I just knew that I sure felt like I was dying and that my young family needed the money (not sure if you heard the news, but streaming doesn't really pay us). What followed was a comic opera, and as painful as it was—and it was very painful—I confess to seeing the humor in it. Eating was so painful that I didn't. For two and a half weeks. Okay, I ate once, in New York (some fish). I collapsed. I was taken to the hospital by my bandmate Ronnie, where a lovely nurse named Karen held my hand and said, "I'm so sorry, baby." We didn't miss our show that night. In fact, we didn't miss any shows on the tour. I remain proud of that. I used an icepick to make new belt holes as my weight plummeted, and I feared catching an indecent exposure charge on stage on top of everything (because it's always something; fate sticks out its foot to trip you, etc.). As painful as it sounds—and I hope it sounds plenty painful—it was much more. But I tried to shield the audience when I sloshed water around in my mouth before spitting it into a spittle cup (I know, it's all gross) because drinking liquid was too painful. I even made sure to try my best to meet kids after the shows. I couldn't in New York, but most nights I did. And when I met them and took pictures, I didn't cry once, even though I wanted to. I wanted to cry like a little baby and say, "I think I'm dying, can you help me?" After each show, I wrote a note to my daughter in case I didn't wake up. Such were the oppressive vibrations all around. Filled to the brim and bubbling over.

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<div>When my family saw me return, they realized letting me go had been a mistake and opted not to repeat it. The West Coast leg was canceled, and I was flown to UCLA by MusiCares. I had gone to the Mayo Clinic early on, feeling something was very wrong, and was made to feel pretty rotten by a doctor whose incompetence I have not seen equaled—and I've seen my share. The typical "rub dirt on it and eat yogurt" Western GI doc routine. With MusiCares now involved, I was no longer dismissed. I was tested, and a few days later, I got a call from a nurse who sounded ill at ease as she told me it was "serious." What followed was six months of nuclear antibiotics and eventually FMT to rid me of the C. diff, which nearly took my life.

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<div>What would have made for a funnier story was for it to do so that afternoon in New York, as I stumbled and fell in the street limping back to my rented apartment from an ill-advised trip to Kim's Video to buy some Frederick Wiseman documentaries, where a concerned employee named Abraham (the receipt is still tucked into the *Domestic Violence 2*) did not say, "I'm so sorry, baby," but instead, "Are you okay?" to which I wanted to cry and say, "I think I'm dying, can you help me?" but instead replied, "I'm not sure." Now that would have been an ending. But I don't write the rulebook. If I did, this would all be a lot sexier. The good thing about not being able to eat on tour is your per diem adds up, and you can buy more movies when you get to New York. But life is no movie. No sir (ma'am), life is life-and-death serious. I hope you will forgive my tone/digressions. It has been suggested on more than one occasion that I have an "attitude problem," and my current situation is not helping. So let's pivot to that.

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<div>A year or so after being cured of the C. diff, I started to experience periods of basically abdominal hell. Such pain after eating that I felt I would pass out, massive weight loss (like 35 lbs overnight), symptoms I will not horrify you with, but suffice it to say, basically the whole potato. About as bad as a body can feel, or at least as bad as I know how. They get progressively longer in duration as well as more painful.

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<div>I attempted to make an album (which I eventually completed, entitled *Lemon Cotton Candy Sunset*) with Rob Schnapf in Los Angeles, but another bout of 35 lb weight loss forced me back home, where doctors sawed into my abdomen, performing exploratory surgery. My marriage ended, and I recovered in a friend's basement. I finished the album, used the proceeds to buy a house (or at least put down a down payment) to raise my daughter in, and together the two of us set about renovating every square inch of it, turning it into the library in which I had always wanted to live. Happy ending! Uh oh, that part about fate sticking out its foot to trip you. Here comes that breakdown bummer.

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<div>The morning after Thanksgiving, I woke up puking my entire guts out. Puking is not normal for me. I felt like something was way wrong, and when I was 10 lbs lighter the next day, my suspicions were confirmed. Then it was 15, then 20, then 30. You get the idea. This time, I didn't experience the gradual rebound, the regression to the status quo, which wasn't very good but was a hell of a lot better than this. This time, it only got worse and worse. Once again, plans to leave town and make a record were scrapped. I sold a lot of stuff and hustled and bought a microphone, preamp, and compressor. Sensing this was going to be prolonged, I taught myself how to self-record, how to use Zoom, and developed a method of working with my Los Angeles friends/musicians remotely. As we developed the tracks and I lost weight (sessions were paused for a trip to Cleveland Clinic, which yielded little but some temporary relief on account of some antibiotic they could have prescribed over FaceTime), I sang the songs line by line, taking breaks to lay down and put a cinder block on my upper abdomen—the only way I could relieve the pressure. But we got it done. That was six years ago. I've been stuck in the house since then. We've made 8 albums in that period. I wrote two movies and a book, while reading thousands and watching just about every motion picture ever made. I've tried to use it as an excuse to expand and improve my mind as my body fails me. I've tried to be worthy of it. But I have jokes for how hard it has been. No words come. I've considered ending my life more times than I can count. I repeat my daughter's name to fall asleep and during the countless nights I wake at 3 am in pain so excruciating I cannot return to slumber, the only place I like to be. Which brings us to a few weeks ago.

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<div>A week and a half ago, I saw a movie called *Erin Brockovich* for the first time and was really inspired by her tenacity. It reinforced that most human problems can be solved by caring more and looking closer. I paid to have my microbiome mapped. I had been using DeepSeek to argue with and make humorous little bits I posted to my Instagram stories, sort of the last shred of human contact I have left. Unlike the American AI models, I was increasingly impressed/disarmed by how far you could take it if you pushed. It recognized very subtle jokes when I fed it my writing, and I was semi-amazed at how much literature it could cross-reference and synthesize. Long suspecting my issue was microbiome-related, even as virtually no doctor acknowledged its role in complex GI conditions, I had a small library of data and papers from NIH/PubMed studies. I took my microbiome map, all of my NIH/PubMed data, every strange and casually dismissed symptom, and I began pushing this particular AI device (it's not American, of course, thus its effectiveness) to act as a sort of research assistant.

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<div>Over the course of a week and a half of full-time work—feeding it data, symptoms, GI mapping, having it cross-reference hundreds of thousands of pieces of medical literature—I synthesized this information into a paper with citations and stuff and reached out to the authors of the six papers most relevant to my situation, as well as the heads of microbiome science at their corresponding universities.

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<div>Long story short, I have an antibiotic-resistant Klebsiella overgrowth at ICU levels, as well as a number of other alarming, out-of-control pathogenic overgrowths on top of essentially no beneficial bacteria left. I was able to figure out a whole lot more about what's going on with me during the course of a couple weeks of full-time-level intensity and have the paper and microbiome map at the ready for any pros who want to take a look. Because the antibiotics used to eradicate C. diff most likely eradicated everything else as well, leading to this situation, and because my situation is antibiotic-resistant (the comedy is back!), I expanded my research into phage therapy clinics in Europe and isolated a dozen or so cases eerily similar to mine, which were resolved utilizing this treatment protocol. I sent a bunch of frozen swabs and stuff to the country of Georgia, where a clinic is developing pathogenic bacteria that most likely was caused by the C. diff a decade ago and has gotten so out of control that it is unprecedented in non-ICU cases.

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<div>The past decade has been perversely expensive, not to mention the challenge of actually performing the basic functions of my job while feeling so incredibly sick and losing so much weight. I’m not sure how much else I can sell or pawn to keep all this going, and of course this isn’t covered by insurance, so here’s another of these silly things that for some reason we all have to start when we get sick or injured. Very cool country. I am not sure how much this will end up costing, I've been sick for awhile and it may take more than one round, but I've set this at the absolute lowest just to relive a little stress in the short term, but I'm sure it will be more. And when this is all done I have a whole lot of work on the PTSD to do. I’m thankful to those of you who are able to be part of this thing financially or even sharing the campaign. Very thankful. Maximus thankful. 

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<div>I'm not spiking the football or getting overly confident, but I’m trying to be hopeful. What I'd like to do is figure out how to download the thousands of pages of data that I generated during this project and make it public in case smarter minds can synthesize it and maybe help someone else who is struggling with a tricky medical situation. I have spent thousands of dollars I do not have on ineffective doctors and treatments, and while this holds great promise in resolving my situation, it is—because of course it's not—covered by insurance. I am too sick and skinny to do my normal hustling. I know it's tough times for everybody, but if you've ever enjoyed something I've made or know someone else who has, I humbly implore you to consider financially being a part of this story or even just share with someone(s) who might be interested. My hope is to build a little portal to provide those of you kind enough to help me make one last stand against this thing with rare/archival material once a week until I recover or die.

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<div>Thank you so much,

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<div>-Richard Edwards

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