Eric Church, Dierks Bentley Songwriter Travis Meadows Recovering After Terrifying Throat Trauma
Travis Meadows says he was scared for his livelihood and his life at several points throughout a weeks-long ordeal with his neck, tongue and throat. It's all left the singer and songwriter struggling to speak, but he says it's a massive improvement.
“I would have felt better to die at one point," Meadows says about 16 minutes into a 23-minute-long health update on YouTube. "It was awful.”
Looking thin but well, and sounding as if he was timid in learning to speak again, Meadows shared how it all started with a massive pain in his back.
"They say my voice is gonna come back … I dunno," he says. "Don’t panic, because that’s only going to make me panic."
Early on, he alludes to doctors deciding to move scheduled back surgery up after he was taken to the emergency room, but complications and a loss of feeling in his arms caused them to focus on his neck. Quickly they replaced a disc in his neck, and as far as he knew, everything went well. The nurse told him:
“'Everything was great, everything was wonderful.' And then she’s like, ‘Oh no! You’re bleeding.’"
For reasons no doctor has figured out, he says, he developed a hematoma. During the first of 11 days in the hospital, there were rounds of tests and questioning that led nowhere.
“My tongue just quit working altogether," Meadows shares. Doctors at one point feared his vocal cords had quit working, which was alarming, to say the least.
“My esophagus, for whatever reason, got mad at the blood clot that pulled away so it started aspirating,” he says. “I tried to swallow and it would shoot through it.”
Several times during his update, Meadows stresses that the voice you hear is a huge improvement from where he was before. He describes how feeling in his mouth and jaw — now covered in a weeks-old beard — is returning and he's able to eat again.
"Everything is going to be OK," he offers toward the end. "I have no idea how long all of this is going to take. I am just now getting to where I can get from one room to the next. I was so weak."
Emotions overcome him as he thanks fans and followers for prayers. The video came via his Patreon page.
In addition to his four studio albums, Meadows has had songs recorded by Eric Church ("Knives of New Orleans"), Dierks Bentley ("Riser"), Kenny Chesney ("Better Boat") and more. Jake Owen has talked about how important Meadows' Killin' Uncle Buzzy album was to him as he discussed his version of the song "What We Ain't Got."
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