My Mom’s brain tumor caused abnormal build up of CSF (Cerebrospinal Fluid) in the ventricles of her brain. Within 12 hours she went from complaining of a headache to being catatonic. The tumor itself was inoperable, but they could preform surgery to put a pump in her brain that worked to drain the CSF. If the surgery was successful we would get our Mom back for a few months and with radiation to shrink the tumor, maybe she would have a year. She had a 50/50 chance of surviving the surgery. Without the surgery she would die in a few weeks if not sooner. We scheduled the surgery. Since she was catatonic, getting her to eat was a problem. By the time visiting hours began a tray had been placed in front of her, then removed untouched, the nurses explained they did not have enough personal to try and feed her and surgery was in just a few days and she was getting IV fluids. I asked if I could come in early and try to feed her.

I was there the next morning when the tray arrived but I could not get my Mom to respond to me, to open her mouth for any food. I had it in my head that her chances for a successful operation were decreased if she was weak from not getting any nutrition for a few days. She looked so sad, sitting in that hospital chair, head down, so lifeless, so not my Mom, not the woman who just a few years before had taken tap shoes with her on a trip to NYC, slipped them out of her bag and on to her feet to tap dance down the street, (to her sister’s mortification) so she could tell people she tapped on Broadway without actually lying. It was that memory that made me think to try music. Years before I had digitized my parents music collection for them and I had it all on my iPod (it was 2004) in my bag with headphones. I picked a song that I knew she loved, that was loud, a song she would want to dance to, Glenn Miller’s Pennsylvania 6-5000. I put the headphones on her, turned the volume way up and hit play. Her eyes opened, her feet started tapping and she looked up at me and I started shoveling food into her and she ate.

The surgery, pump and the radiation were successful, we had 15 more months with Mom. We used music everyday, to calm her when she became agitated, to relax her when she was in pain and to make her happy when grumpy.

Both my parents loved music and both could sing beautifully, but Dad’s stroke robbed him of his ability to carry a tune and his hearing loss made it harder for him to enjoy music. I kept trying to get him to listen to music again, but he would say, I can barely hear it and I can’t sing any more so why bother. I figured out how to fix the first problem, headphones with an amplifier attached and I finally convinced him that it did not matter how well he sang only if he enjoyed it. Since he was paralyzed on his left side he could not feel if the headphones where over his left ear, nor could he hear in that ear, he would always need a little help with them, and I would gladly help, after I stopped laughing and took a photo to share with my sister.

In 2014 I saw the documentary Alive Inside, it is available to stream and I highly recommend it, you can find the trailer and clips on YouTube. I started to read more about music therapy, the amazing results with Alzheimers and Parkinson’s patients (Google “music and parkinson's gait”). When parts of the brain are damaged by a tumor, stroke, disease or injury you lose abilities that were controlled in that location, memories that were stored there, but music unlike other memories or stimuli affects multiple areas of the brain and is stored in various places. It’s as if our brains create a back up of the soundtrack of our lives, so when some cells are damaged or die, we don’t lose our personal iTunes library.

The last 8 months of my Dad’s life required wound care three times a week, even with morphine the pain in his paralyzed foot was intense during the treatments. As soon as I put the headphones on him and turned his music on, his whole body would relax and he would sing.

Create playlists for your loved ones, get them singing their favorite songs, songs from when they were young. Instead of having the TV on as background noise, that we all do so much, play music. Do it for them, do it for your future self, expand that iTunes library in your head.

AFTER - Music

I love the songs my parents loved, we grew up singing along to Nat King Cole, my Mom’s favorite singer. Family road trips did not include car games, but sing alongs and not to the radio. Car rides were all about learning new songs (new to my sister and I) and singing our favorites. My Dad sang us to sleep with old Sinatra, Dean Martin and Bing Crosby songs. I sang along with both parents during music therapy and those final 8 months of my Dad’s life music played almost non-stop and I never got sick of it. The westerns movies and TV shows he watched, YES, the music never. After he died I could listen to music, but not “his” music. The music I loved my entire life I was afraid to listen too, I thought it would cause too much pain.

Turns out I was wrong, or maybe just enough time had pasted. A few months back a friend sent me several Amazon Echo’s, to fill the house with music. I had it playing different playlists, then one day I just said “play music” and it began to randomly play songs and I found myself singing along to the old songs, the songs of my parents youth.

I’ve gotten rid of cable TV, I just have a couple streaming services, mostly I watch Marvel Movies on a loop when I do watch TV. Music is filling the house again.