Adele Sings Because Of Doctor's Skill

MIAMI (CBS4) - She was at the start of what may well be the most meteoric rise in music history. Barely an adult, her second CD, 21, sold 17 million copies worldwide and then, stayed atop the charts for longer than any other CB in the past 2 decades. That's when tragedy struck.

While singing line on French radio, singer Adele felt her voice simply shut down. From Soprano, she said she felt like a baritone. She knew something was horribly wrong.

It took Dr. Steven Zeitels to set things right.

She worried her amazing singing career could be stopped in it's tracks by what turned out to be a polyp on her vocal cords that had burst.

Zeitels is the director of the Voice Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, where Adele went for laser surgery.

"There was nothing  unusual about it the type of thing Adele had, which is, you know,  been very well publicized," he said. "It was just simply a benign bleeding polyp.

"We have very unique technology  that we developed over time that took care of this beautifully."

Speaking on the CBS News broadcast 60 minutes in an interview broadcast just hours before her amazing sweep of the Grammy Awards Sunday night, she told Anderson Cooper the operation was pretty straight-forward.

"They put lasers down your throat, cut off the polyp and kind of laser your hemorage back and fix it," she said.

She said her biggest problem was the inability to speak while she recovered from surgery, but said she used apps on her phone, including one that had a special, and critical, capability.

"But the great thing is I love to swear. Most of [the apps] you can't swear on, but I found this one app where you can swear, so I'm still really getting my point across."

The surgery allowed her voice to heal, and her performance at Sunday's Grammy Awards was her first since she recovered. It brought the house down, as did the award after award she took home, winning every category in which she was nominated.

"She is just a phenomenal singer , she is looking great in terms of her vocal function and , you know, she is just a very thoughtful person so i am sure she is integrating all that she has learned, because she is pretty young, that now she will be able to control her own destiny with all of us this."