Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

The Beginner's Mind of Yo-Yo Ma

I’ve been an Audible listener for over a decade. THIS IS NOT AN ADVERT!

This past week, Audible released a 90 minute monologue written and performed by Yo-Yo Ma on his life in music. It’s called Yo-Yo Ma “Beginner’s Mind Words+Music.”

Audible has had similar pieces by James Taylor and Sting (there may be others). All are great. All are free to Audible listeners. Yo-Yo Ma’s may be the preeminent one. Others may feel differently.

Here is a review with a few short excerpts.

Rapa Nui Pianist

Mahani Teave is that most unlikely of creatures – a world-class pianist from Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Chile. The NY Times had an article about her on February 27, 2021.

She combines the grace and beauty of Polynesia with the elegance of classical piano music. Spotify hosts her album: Rapa Nui Odyssey.

Today, Mahani runs a music school on Rapa Nui.

(For Full Screen of Video click HERE)

Music Therapy Offers an End-of-Life Grace Note

by Sharon Ottermanjian NY Times, Jan. 15, 201

Music therapy, a board certified health profession that has about 7,500 practitioners nationwide, is becoming more prevalent in nursing homes and hospices because of sessions like those reported in this article. It is increasing being used in end-of-life care.

Russell Hilliard, the founder of the Center for Music Therapy in End of Life Care in Finksburg, Md., has published research showing that in the hospice environment, music therapists were often the only professionals consistently treating emotional, spiritual, cognitive, social and physical needs of patients.

While it has not been proven to extend life, multiple studies have shown music therapy can improve quality of life, inspire feelings of peace, spirituality and hope, and reduce pain.

Comment: This is an example of low-tech high value care that improves patients' well-being and is associated with no untoward side-effects.

The Virtuoso

Eric Sun: The Virtuoso
The New Yorker, January 1, 2018

“That profound moment of making music that takes you to another world is something we’re very privileged to experience.”

This memorable New Yorker piece will introduce you to Eric Sun. His last performance was as the Fiddler who plays the overture in the musical. The program read:

Due to an incurable brain cancer, this production of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ will be his final set of public performances…

Johannes Brahms wrote his first violin sonata for his muse, the pianist Clara Schumann. He presented it to her in 1879, soon after the death of her youngest child, Felix, who was named for the composer Felix Mendelssohn and was the only violinist among Schumann’s eight children. Brahms was his godfather. The sonata, which Brahms completed at the relatively late age of forty-six, takes its theme from his own “Regenlied,” or “Rain Song,” and is a meditation on the loss of childhood innocence. The violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who was captivated by the work as a child, has said that it is best played by an adult. “I have a deeper understanding of music and, if you want it or not, life does leave its marks not only in your brain but in your heart and in your soul,” she said. “The understanding of things deepens.”

“It’s been hard to come to grips with having aggressive and incurable Grade 4 brain cancer; it’s been hard not to get angry and sad about it; it’s been frustrating that every pathology test after my surgery came back with the worst possible result; and it’s been hard to accept that modern medicine isn’t able to fix me.” Eric Sun

Read this important New Yorker piece: The Virtuoso. It is a comment on disease, music, and the transforming nature of art. Eric Sun died of cancer on November 23, 2017, shortly after his last haunting performance as the Fiddler.

You Tube Eric Sun Fiddler (there are other versions, too)

Henriette Thompson: Nonagenarian Pianist and Marathoner

Harriette Thompson, a classical pianist and cancer survivor who started to run marathons when she was 76 and ran the fastest time in a marathon for a woman over 90, died on Monday, October 16 in Charlotte, N.C. She was 94. NY Times Obituary.

[In the past few years, she ran] while wearing white tights to cover the open wounds on her legs from radiation treatments for cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma. Over the last seven years she had also dealt with a recurrence of oral cancer, which first struck her in 1986. The short and instructive New York Times obituary has many teaching points and is inspirational.

1. This 94-year-old musician and athlete died from a fall at the facility she was living in, not from her cancers.
2. Although she had squamous cell carcinoma of her legs and was being treated with radiotherapy the skin cancers were not proximate causes of her demise. This corroborates the work of E. Linos on “Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer in the Elderly.” In my opinion, we pay far too much attention to skin cancers which are billable to Medicaid and Medicare than to having patients use canes or having 94-year-old people being extremely cautious about stairs.
3.  This remarkable woman was a pianist until her death, she was an athlete. She had great meaning of her life.

For me, as a dermatologist, this reinforces the fact that treatment of non-melanoma skin cancer in the elderly, especially people over age 85, is not likely to improve their quality of life. Before recommending therapy, we may need to step back and not scare our elderly patients into having unnecessary surgery but, as experts, we should have honest discussions with them. Lesions in certain areas are best treated (around the eyes, nose, ears); but lesions on the torso and extremities can often be followed by active surveillance.These short You Tube videos will interest some of you.

 

 

Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick is a soprano, composer and presenter. A recipient of two double lung transplants, she speaks and performs frequently at concerts, conferences and events around the United States.

Her TED talk is inspirational.

She has published a book, The Encore: A Memoir in Three Acts (October 3, 2017) that she spoke about on October  on NPR^.

Scott Simon's October 1, 2017 NPR Interview of Charity Telemann-Dick is worth listening to.

If you are not familiar with Ms. Tillemann-Dick’s story you will appreciate the above links.

There are three types of Illness Narratives. Hers is a Restitution Story.

Man versus Nature — Also Sprach Zarathustra and an End-of-Life House Call

by Maxwell M. Krem, M.D., Ph.D.

N Engl J Med 2017; 377:709-711

In this remarkable essay, an oncologist relates his encounter with a long-term patient who has decided to avail himself of the state’s death with dignity law and walk away from yet another painful round of chemotherapy. On his drive home, the physician hears a musical composition that reframes the experience in terms of the dialectic of Man versus Nature.

I recall reading of an exchange Aaron Copeland had with a fan who asked, “Does music have meaning?” Copeland answered, “Yes.” “Great, can you tell me what it is in words?” Copeland replied, "No." This Perspective piece is an impressive attempt to do just that.

PDF: Download Man versus Nature — Also Sprach Zarathustra and an End-of-Life House Call - NEJMp1705492

 

Image from NEJM article

 

My Singing Angel

by Jane E. Babin
(We published a version version of this in 2006 on the precursor to C2S Blog)
It may be easier to read as a pdf: Download My Singing Angel Babin

When I entered Massachusetts General Hospital last April to have a feeding tube placed in my stomach, I was very apprehensive. Don't get me wrong. I had every confidence in the surgeons and staff at this prominent facility. Also, this procedure is done routinely.

My cause for concern was my ALS, aka, Lou Gehrig's disease. At the time, I had not yet had my tracheotomy. Because ALS is a neuromuscular disease that had begun to affect my diaphragm, I was afraid of any sedation that could compromise my already weakened ability to breathe. Try as they might, the medical staff, with their confusing medical jargon, could not allay my fears. I became more and more anxious as the night approached.

It was then that a singing angel entered my life. As I lay on my bed I heard this wonderful sound fill my ears. A nursing assistant had come to make sure I was settled in for the night. A beautiful Haitian woman with large, dark eyes was singing to me. "Is that gospel I hear?" I said, smiling up at her. "Uh-huh. Do you like?" I nodded my head.

She proceeded to tell me that she sang in a church choir in Boston. I responded that her voice was beautiful and that it must be some choir! She smiled and seemed to study my face. "Are you afraid of what's going to happen to you tomorrow?" All my fears came flooding back in that moment and a few tears trickled down my face. "Don't worry, honey," she said, "everything will be okay. Would you like me to sing another hymn?" I nodded, and she went soulfully into another song.

I'm not sure of the name of the hymn or its melody. But its refrain, Till the storm passes by, will remain with me forever. Over and over, with increasing passion, she repeated this refrain.*

My tears subsided and when she finished she said, "There, now, there is nothing to fear. Go to sleep." She then asked if I would like her to sing to me before my procedure the next day. I smiled and said that, yes, I would love it. She patted my hand and walked away. I soon fell fast asleep.

The next morning, true to her word, she appeared at my bedside and sang the same hymn as the night before. At once, I felt all my anxiety melt away. A few minutes later, I was wheeled into surgery a changed woman.

Sometimes medicine is indeed the best medicine. Sometimes it is the song of an angel.

* A friend later told me the words are from Till the Storm Passes By, a Methodist hymn, music by Mosie Lister. The moving words of the refrain:

Till the storm passes over,
Till the thunder sounds no more,
Till the clouds roll forever from the sky;
Hold me fast, let me stand
In the hollow of Thy hand,
Keep me safe till the storm passes by.

[Editors note: To enhance your reading experience, we urge you to click on the link below to hear the hymn that the nursing assistant sang to Ms. Babin]  
Till the Storm Passes By     Moises Lister (1939)

Jane Babin was a remarkable woman.  She died in March of 2015 after enduring ALS for over a decade.

A recent article "Tidying rooms and tending hearts" described the important role ward cleaners can play in patient care.  It reminded me of Jane Babin's vignette from ~ 10 years ago.  Download Cleaning Staff

Amazing Grace in South Carolina

'nuff said:

Amazing Grace Wiki.

Also hear Diana Ross:

7.4.2015: Michiko Kakutai’s essay on the eulogy Obama delivered in Charleston on Friday June 26, 2015 is a moving and informative discussion of the speech and the week it was delivered in.  He writes, “it [the speech] was the capstone to a dizzying and momentous week in which Southern politicians began calling for a renunciation of the Confederate battle flag, while the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act and found that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriages.

It was a week in which a lot of Americans felt they were actually watching the arc of history bend in front of their eyes*, and it was a eulogy that both spoke to the moment and connected that moment to the past and the future of what Mr. Obama calls the great “American experiment.”

* This quote originated with the 19^th Century abolitionist, Theodore Parker (NPR segment).
  "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."
A century later, Martin Luther King, Jr. paraphrased these words to great effect in his famous "Where Do We Go From Here?" speech of August 1967 to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, when he said, "The arc of the Moral Universe Is long, but It bends toward Justice".

 

Boston Flash Mob for Music & Health

Cell2Soul Member Lisa Wong wrote us:

"We’d like to invite you to join us and be a part of an extraordinary event on Sunday, September 29, 2013 at 3:00pm to celebrate Music and Wellness throughout our great city. 

In celebration of its 75^th anniversary, Celebrity Series of Boston will be presenting “Play me, I’m Yours,” bringing 75 painted pianos to 75 locations on the streets of Boston, Cambridge and Somerville.

In recognition of the unique strength of Boston’s healthcare and cultural communities, we’re thrilled to announce that Sunday, September 29 will be designated “Music and Wellness Day,” with a city wide “flash mob for health” at 3:00 p.m."

Details: Download Music and Healing