Broken chops - the beginning

So, this is going to be a highly shortened version of my whole back story and why I've decided to start this blog. The short and sweet of it is, about 3 years ago, my chops broke. They literally completely stopped working with seeming no notice and I've spent the past 3 years building them back up slowly and painfully. The purpose of this blog site is to chronicle some of what has occurred as well as to keep a record of what I've done in hopes that it may help someone else.

Going back to the very beginning - right after I had started playing the horn, I had an incident where my face met a hard wood floor. The floor won. My top, front, left tooth was broken in half. At that point, I had a temporary crown put on and had it replaced a few times over the following 15 years. As a beginning horn player, I seemed to excel despite the injury. However, my embouchure started out crooked to help avoid the bad (and oversized due to the temporary crown) tooth.

2 Years passed by. I was 14, in the 9th grade and full of ego. I had an ear infection that was bad enough to pinch the nerve that controlled the muscles in the right side of my face. It simply stopped working. To play, I had to move my embouchure all the way to the left and cover the right side of my mouth with medical tape. Instead of waiting until I healed, I continued to play. Immediately after checking out of the hospital, I even got 2nd chair at the All Region competition using my funky, misplaced embouchure. (I still haven't forgotten that you beat me Jackie!)