LOS ANGELES (March 8, 1999) -- When Billy Richards talks about making a comeback, he is referring not only to his career in music. His greater challenge has been to regain speech, memory, motor and cognitive skills that were lost when an aneurysm nearly took his life two years ago.
Richards, who sang "Yackety Yak," "Poison Ivy" and other 1950s classics with members of The Coasters, collapsed while playing racquetball on July 9, 1997. He was rushed to the nearest hospital and later transferred to the Cedars-Sinai Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute in Los Angeles.
During an angiogram and CT scan, Reid Thompson, M.D., neurosurgeon, and Franklin Moser, M.D., neuroradiologist and endovascular specialist, detected two aneurysms on the side of an artery in Richards' brain. One aneurysm (a weak spot on an artery wall which bulges like a tiny balloon) had already ruptured, allowing blood to flow into the brain. Such hemorrhaging often leads to paralysis, coma and even death.
To treat this aneurysm, Dr. Thompson and his team used a technique called embolization with coiling. A detachable, platinum coil was threaded through a catheter into the artery and directed to the aneurysm, where it sealed the rupture by lodging in the bulged area and conforming to its shape. About a week later, the team performed a microsurgical procedure to clamp the second area with a titanium clip, depriving the aneurysm of blood flow and preventing it from hemorrhaging.
Following these procedures, Richards started the long process of rehabilitation. Although he made steady, dramatic progress on the medical center's rehabilitation unit, his first overnight visit home forced the family to recognize the level of effort that would lie ahead. "He could not turn on the television or figure out the phone or use utensils at dinner," says his wife, Marianne. "There was nothing in the house he could do. Whether or not he remembers it now, you could just see it in his face that night. It was awful to witness. It was like he was locked out of his life."
Richards' memory still occasionally falters when searching for a word or detail but Marianne and his son, Jonathan, help fill in the blanks. They also recall much darker days when Richards would become uncharacteristically agitated, hallucinatory, and subject to uncontrollable urges. Back then, he might jump up and down on the bed or become obsessed with being clean-shaven to the point that his razors had to be hidden. Personality changes transformed him from cheerful and animated to volatile and angry. "He wasn't the same person," Marianne says. "It wasn't him in there."
Eventually, thanks to his physicians' expertise, his therapists' and family's patience, and his own hard work, Richards began to regain his basic skills and the powers of reasoning. His recovery has amazed seasoned therapists and especially his own family. Although reading comprehension has been an ongoing challenge, Richards is again able to participate in life. His once-weakened right hand, for example, has regained strength, allowing him to play pool, golf -- even racquetball.
Richards began his professional singing career at age 17 when he started performing with the rock and roll group, The Robins, created by his uncles, Roy and William Richards, and also featuring Carl Gardner and Bobby Nunn. Gardner and Nunn left to form the Coasters. Nunn eventually moved to the West Coast, recruited Richards as the lead singer and formed his own Coasters group. For more than two decades, the aggregation toured the world and helped keep appreciation for '50s music alive. After Nunn died, Richards became owner and manager of the group, renaming it Billy Richards' Coasters.
Marianne says Billy won't be happy until he's singing again. He already has performed impromptu numbers for friends and fans, and he continues to practice his music during voice therapy. "It's been a long road for me," Richards says. "I think I'm back now."
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