# From Guitarist to Medical Musician: Andrew Schulman's Inspiring Journey of Healing Through Music's Power

An episode of [Music Saved Me Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1703080557), 28 Oct 2026, 51 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/ee29bc0a-f712-47d6-a49c-b25700f0582e/e3cad67f-5320-4848-80c8-b4e8014c0446/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=dfceda02-3624-42c7-b522-b25700f0584c

What if the key to your survival lay in the power of music? Join host Lynn Hoffman on this enlightening episode of the Music Saved Me Podcast as she sits down with Andrew Schulman, a remarkable guitarist whose life took an unexpected turn after a near-fatal medical crisis. In 2009, Andrew faced what was initially diagnosed as pancreatic cancer, leading him into a harrowing battle for life that included a medically induced coma. It was during this critical juncture that the healing power of music emerged as a beacon of hope. As his wife played Bach's St. Matthew Passion, Andrew’s vital signs stabilized, illustrating just how profoundly music saved him. Andrew’s journey is not just one of survival; it is a testament to the transformative impact of music as a healing tool. After his recovery, he became the executive director of the Medical Musician Initiative, an organization dedicated to training musicians to deliver therapeutic music in critical care settings. This episode explores the science behind music and emotional healing, the history of music in medicine, and the essential role of healing through music in healthcare. Andrew shares personal stories from his memoir, Waking the Spirit: A Musician's Journey, Healing Body, Mind, and Soul, revealing how music has the power to heal not only the body but also the mind and spirit. Listeners will gain insights into the fascinating world where music and emotional well-being intersect, learning about the inspiring musicians who have turned their own struggles into powerful stories of hope and resilience. From the personal stories of musicians to the science that backs up the therapeutic benefits of music, this episode is packed with inspiring music stories that will resonate deeply with anyone who has ever found solace in a song. Whether you’re a fan of indie music, curious about the latest indie music stories, or simply seeking inspiration, Andrew’s experiences will touch your heart. So, what song got you through something hard? Discover how music can be a lifeline, a source of strength, and a vital part of our healing journeys. Tune in to the Music Saved Me Podcast for a conversation that promises to inspire and uplift, reminding us all that indeed, music saved me. Support the show: https://musicsavedme.net/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Music saved me. Welcome to Music Saved Me. I'm Lynn Hoffman,
[0:04] Speaker 1: proud to be a part of the Buzz Night Media
[0:06] Speaker 1: Productions group of uplifting and inspiring podcasts. And I'm lucky
[0:11] Speaker 1: enough to host two of them, Comedy Saved Me and
[0:13] Speaker 1: this one, Music Saved Me. So thank you for listening.
[0:16] Speaker 1: And you may also like a couple of other podcasts
[0:18] Speaker 1: in our group, Taking a Walk. with music historian Buzz Knight.
[0:22] Speaker 1: I call him that because he knows everything about music.
[0:25] Speaker 1: And Taking a Walk Nashville with Sarah Harrelson. And our
[0:28] Speaker 1: newest podcast, I don't know if you heard about this, Andrew.
[0:31] Speaker 1: We are so excited. Jersey Made just launched. It's all
[0:33] Speaker 1: about the incredible contribution to music history and the soundtrack
[0:37] Speaker 1: of our lives. That one little state that is way
[0:40] Speaker 1: bigger than everyone thoughts. And you can find all of
[0:43] Speaker 1: our podcasts on the iHeart Radio app and Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
[0:48] Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. My guest today knows
[0:52] Speaker 1: the power of music to heal from both sides of
[0:55] Speaker 1: the hospital bed. Andrew Schulman is a professional guitarist who
[0:59] Speaker 1: became a medical musician after a life-threatening crisis of his own.
[1:04] Speaker 1: In 2009, after surgery, he laid in a medically-induced coma.
[1:09] Speaker 1: When nothing else worked, his wife played him Bach's St.
[1:13] Speaker 1: Matthew Passion in And the music reached him and his
[1:16] Speaker 1: vital signs stabilized and he survived. And I have goosebumps
[1:20] Speaker 1: even talking about this. He went back to the ICU,
[1:24] Speaker 1: but this time with his guitar. And today he is
[1:27] Speaker 1: the executive director of the Medical Musician Initiative, the only
[1:31] Speaker 1: organization in the entire world devoted specifically to training professional
[1:35] Speaker 1: musicians to join critical care and ICU teams. Let me
[1:40] Speaker 1: take you back in 2017. This man became the first
[1:42] Speaker 1: therapeutic musician. Yeah, therapeutic musician accepted as a professional member
[1:48] Speaker 1: of the Society of Critical Care Medicine. This is big.
[1:51] Speaker 1: He served on its ICU Liberation Committee. He launched its
[1:55] Speaker 1: first therapeutic music knowledge education group. And when he's not
[1:59] Speaker 1: spinning all those plates, he's now serving as visiting artist
[2:02] Speaker 1: and medical musician at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. And now
[2:08] Speaker 1: with his colleague, Gerald Langlois. I hope I pronounced that correctly.
[2:13] Speaker 2: Langlois.
[2:13] Speaker 1: Langlois. Oh, I love it even more.
[2:15] Speaker 2: French.
[2:16] Speaker 1: He just has taken the MMI, which is the Medical
[2:19] Speaker 1: Musician Initiatives Training Workshops, online for everyone. We're going to
[2:24] Speaker 1: talk with the wonderful Andrew Shulman next on Music Save Me.
[2:31] Speaker 1: Music Saved Me. Welcome back to Music Saved Me. I'm
[2:34] Speaker 1: so happy to have Andrew Shulman right here with me. Andrew,
[2:38] Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here and coming on
[2:39] Speaker 1: the show to talk about your story and what you're doing.
[2:42] Speaker 1: It's amazing.
[2:43] Speaker 2: Oh, it's a real pleasure to be here.
[2:46] Speaker 1: Our show is called Music Saved Me, and for you,
[2:48] Speaker 1: that's literal, almost. Can you.
[2:51] Speaker 2: No, literally, literally, literally. Completely.
[2:55] Speaker 1: Can you, Andrew, take us back to the moment when
[2:58] Speaker 1: music became a matter of life and death for you.
[3:00] Speaker 1: Can you tell our audience what happened?
[3:03] Speaker 2: Sure. I had been given a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer
[3:09] Speaker 2: in July 2009. I had the surgery, and a miracle happened,
[3:16] Speaker 2: which was that although everything indicated cancer, the mass was
[3:20] Speaker 2: actually benign. And the surgeon was thrilled. They know this
[3:27] Speaker 2: during the surgery because they do something called a frozen
[3:31] Speaker 2: sections procedure. They take out the mass, they slice it
[3:35] Speaker 2: super thin, they freeze dry it, and they can tell immediately.
[3:40] Speaker 2: They usually do that just to confirm it's cancer. In
[3:43] Speaker 2: my case, what it confirmed was that I was that
[3:46] Speaker 2: one out of a thousand times where everything looks like cancer,
[3:49] Speaker 2: but it was benign. Everybody's thrilled. the surgeon leaves the
[3:55] Speaker 2: sewing up of the wound to his chief resident who's there.
[4:00] Speaker 2: He goes down to tell my wife this miracle. Everybody's overjoyed.
[4:04] Speaker 2: And then his beeper goes off and it says, get
[4:07] Speaker 2: to the surgical ICU immediately. And he knew, of course,
[4:12] Speaker 2: that something had happened. There were complications. We have, by
[4:16] Speaker 2: the way, never found out what the complications were, but
[4:20] Speaker 2: By the time I reached the door of the operating
[4:23] Speaker 2: room to go to the surgical ICU, my blood pressure
[4:27] Speaker 2: started plummeting. And within seconds, it reached zero. And when
[4:32] Speaker 2: it reaches zero, you have about two minutes before your
[4:36] Speaker 2: heart stops. And it was a five-minute trip to the
[4:40] Speaker 2: surgical ICU, which we call a SICU. And so about
[4:45] Speaker 2: two minutes before they arrived, I was clinically dead. Fortunately,
[4:51] Speaker 2: at this hospital at that time in 2009, they had
[4:54] Speaker 2: one of the best medical teams in a SICU in
[4:59] Speaker 2: the city of New York. They were able to resuscitate
[5:02] Speaker 2: me and bring me back, but I was massively sick.
[5:08] Speaker 2: And what they do then is they put you into
[5:09] Speaker 2: a medically induced coma. By the way, I died twice
[5:13] Speaker 2: that night. Because several hours later, somebody adjusted some of
[5:17] Speaker 2: the medications and my heart stopped again. And they had
[5:20] Speaker 2: to do the whole thing all over. Well, I make
[5:25] Speaker 2: it to the next day. No one can believe that
[5:27] Speaker 2: I'm still alive. This was the Thursday night. And Friday
[5:32] Speaker 2: is one complication after another. Saturday, one complication after another.
[5:37] Speaker 2: On Sunday at noon, I was now... They had managed
[5:42] Speaker 2: to keep me alive, but I was sinking steadily for
[5:45] Speaker 2: these three days. My favorite way of describing how precarious
[5:50] Speaker 2: it was is that at noon on that Sunday, my
[5:55] Speaker 2: lactic acid number was 17. Normal is 1.8. They get
[6:03] Speaker 2: nervous when it hits four or five. Very few people
[6:07] Speaker 2: are alive once it reaches 10. Mine was 17, and
[6:12] Speaker 2: what that basically means, I was actively dying. Well, never know,
[6:16] Speaker 2: did I have five minutes left? But the doctors told
[6:19] Speaker 2: me I wouldn't have been able to live much more
[6:22] Speaker 2: than another hour. Well, right at this moment, at noon,
[6:26] Speaker 2: my wife Wendy reaches into her bag to call my mother.
[6:29] Speaker 2: My mother was in Florida, and she was ill, so
[6:33] Speaker 2: she couldn't be there. But Wendy was updating her. Before
[6:36] Speaker 2: she calls her, she sees my iPod. And the light
[6:41] Speaker 2: bulb goes off. And she turns to the attending physician
[6:46] Speaker 2: and says, if there's one thing I know about my husband,
[6:49] Speaker 2: he loves music more than anything. His heart is beating,
[6:52] Speaker 2: but his soul isn't. I believe that only music can
[6:57] Speaker 2: give him the will to live. Those were her exact words.
[7:00] Speaker 2: That doctor, Dr. Simon Iriff, I always love to mention
[7:04] Speaker 2: his name to give him the credit, was a really
[7:06] Speaker 2: cool guy because most doctors would have said no because
[7:10] Speaker 2: you put in the iPod and the patient dies immediately
[7:15] Speaker 2: and then he gets sued for malpractice. But this guy
[7:18] Speaker 2: was great. He said, I'll give you 30 minutes. If
[7:23] Speaker 2: there's any sign of agitation, remove the iPod immediately. They
[7:29] Speaker 2: put the music in and as it turns out, now
[7:32] Speaker 2: I happen to have my guitar right here. And I
[7:38] Speaker 2: can't play the St. Matthew Passion, which is written for
[7:42] Speaker 2: two orchestras and chorus and singers. But I can give
[7:46] Speaker 2: you a sense of the way the music starts. It
[7:49] Speaker 2: begins that in the bass, this is the sound of
[7:55] Speaker 2: a heartbeat.
[7:56] Speaker 3: And then the flutes and the oboes play this melody.
[8:16] Speaker 3: You see this, that's exactly, that is a good way
[8:21] Speaker 3: to get a sense of what the sound was.
[8:23] Speaker 2: Well, that's very dramatic sound, isn't it?
[8:25] Speaker 1: It's progressing.
[8:26] Speaker 2: It's very powerful. Yeah. And it's progressing, it's pulling you
[8:29] Speaker 2: and everything. And the great luck was that it was
[8:32] Speaker 2: my ultimate favorite piece of music and my favorite recording,
[8:35] Speaker 2: the recording with Leonard Bernstein conducting and the New York
[8:39] Speaker 2: Philharmonic and great singers. Wow. And so the music over
[8:45] Speaker 2: the next 30 minutes reversed the metabolic process that was
[8:51] Speaker 2: killing me. That's how I survived this. And also, when
[8:56] Speaker 2: you hear music, why it's so healing and why it
[9:00] Speaker 2: moves you is that music activates more of the brain
[9:04] Speaker 2: than any other stimulus. And in activating all these different
[9:08] Speaker 2: sections in your brain, Your brain is the cheapest and
[9:12] Speaker 2: most non-invasive pharmacy there is. Your brain starts producing dopamine,
[9:17] Speaker 2: which is very important to healing, and serotonin, and oxytocin,
[9:22] Speaker 2: all these chemicals. And as one doctor said, these chemicals
[9:26] Speaker 2: flowed through my body carrying a message, it's not time
[9:30] Speaker 2: to shut down yet. And so in that moment, and
[9:34] Speaker 2: I love the title of your show, Music Saved Me,
[9:37] Speaker 2: The doctors all concurred. There is absolutely no question that
[9:42] Speaker 2: that music at that moment literally saved my life. And people,
[9:50] Speaker 2: by the way, ask me, did I hear the music?
[9:53] Speaker 2: When you're in a coma, you hear everything. It is
[9:57] Speaker 2: translated into visions or or hallucinations. And these are called
[10:02] Speaker 2: coma dreams, by the way. It's not the same as
[10:05] Speaker 2: a regular dream. It's a coma dream. And I had
[10:08] Speaker 2: a remarkable coma dream. which I won't tell you because
[10:12] Speaker 2: it would take too long. And I wrote a book,
[10:14] Speaker 2: and I have an audio book, and especially the audio book.
[10:17] Speaker 2: I'd love for people to read it or listen to
[10:20] Speaker 2: the audio book. And that chapter, it's in Chapter 3.
[10:24] Speaker 2: It's really extraordinary. And by the way, there's Phoebe who
[10:27] Speaker 2: just came in.
[10:27] Speaker 1: What's the name of the book?
[10:29] Speaker 2: Hi, Phoebe. The book is Waking the Spirit, A Musician's Journey,
[10:34] Speaker 2: Healing Body, Mind, and Soul. And the print version came
[10:38] Speaker 2: out 10 years ago. It's been an Amazon bestseller every
[10:42] Speaker 2: day for 10 years. And the audiobook was made this
[10:46] Speaker 2: year for Blackstone Publishers. I did the narration and I
[10:50] Speaker 2: play five different guitar pieces interspersed throughout the audiobook.
[10:54] Speaker 3: Wow.
[10:55] Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
[10:56] Speaker 2: By the way, Lynn, you've noticed I'm very shy and
[10:58] Speaker 2: not very talkative.
[11:00] Speaker 1: I was saying, you know, I'm going to have to
[11:03] Speaker 1: work on this one to get him to say something. Well,
[11:06] Speaker 1: you already answered my first question, which was basically what
[11:09] Speaker 1: did you remember and what were you told about how
[11:12] Speaker 1: music reached you? You know, when basically nothing else would.
[11:15] Speaker 1: But you know for certain, because the doctors were there,
[11:19] Speaker 1: did they write this down? I mean, does this go
[11:21] Speaker 1: in medical journals in the future?
[11:23] Speaker 2: Yes.
[11:24] Speaker 1: Okay.
[11:24] Speaker 3: Wow.
[11:25] Speaker 2: Yes, yes. It was in my chart. I was in
[11:28] Speaker 2: the ICU for 10 days.
[11:29] Speaker 3: Wow.
[11:32] Speaker 2: My chart was 320 pages long.
[11:35] Speaker 3: Wow.
[11:36] Speaker 2: And also, my medical story, I'm very, very pleased that
[11:41] Speaker 2: when I found out that several of the doctors were
[11:47] Speaker 2: at medical conventions and they told this story because it
[11:55] Speaker 2: is a great indicator and a great help to understand
[11:59] Speaker 2: that therapeutic music is extraordinarily valuable. It was part of
[12:07] Speaker 2: all society's medical processes throughout recorded history. Every culture, you
[12:14] Speaker 2: see that music was part of the healing process until
[12:18] Speaker 2: about the early 19th century when doctors got more into science.
[12:24] Speaker 2: And music got pushed out because the doctors in Europe
[12:27] Speaker 2: and North America said, oh, music is not really science.
[12:33] Speaker 2: They got rid of it. What turns it around, and
[12:36] Speaker 2: I have a chapter in my book about the whole
[12:38] Speaker 2: history of music in medicine, what turns it around begins
[12:43] Speaker 2: in the American Civil War when they had a tremendous
[12:48] Speaker 2: amount of casualties, many, many wounded soldiers. And in the hospitals,
[12:54] Speaker 2: they found if they brought in local musicians to play,
[12:58] Speaker 2: it helped everybody. It helped the wounded soldiers, it helped
[13:02] Speaker 2: the staff. Then after that war is over, music sort
[13:06] Speaker 2: of falls away again. But in World War I, it
[13:09] Speaker 2: comes back, especially in World War II. It's used a lot.
[13:15] Speaker 2: And it's in 1950 at a national conference where the
[13:21] Speaker 2: field of music therapy was is formed. 1950? It's in
[13:27] Speaker 2: 1950 where music therapy is formed as a professional endeavor.
[13:33] Speaker 2: And it still was not used that much. What really
[13:37] Speaker 2: turns it around the most is that in the late
[13:40] Speaker 2: 1980s into the 1990s, they start doing something called fMRI.
[13:46] Speaker 2: That's the MRI that's done in real time. And that's
[13:51] Speaker 2: when it was scientifically understood from experimentation that music actually
[13:58] Speaker 2: activates more of the brain than any other stimulus. And
[14:03] Speaker 2: that is the most important reason why music is literally
[14:08] Speaker 2: a form of medicine. It's a form of a medical modality.
[14:13] Speaker 2: And it's a very exciting field. The music and medicine
[14:16] Speaker 2: field now is exciting. There are about 10,000 music therapists
[14:20] Speaker 2: right now in the United States. There is another organization
[14:24] Speaker 2: called Music for Healing and Transition Program. There's about 1,400
[14:28] Speaker 2: of those people who are trained for that. There are
[14:30] Speaker 2: several other. There are some harp associations there. that train
[14:35] Speaker 2: people to do this. I'm the newest kid on the
[14:40] Speaker 2: block because Medical Musician Initiative was founded in 2018. And
[14:46] Speaker 2: our purpose is we're specifically focused on critical care medicine.
[14:53] Speaker 2: And our approach is to actually take professional musicians, such
[15:00] Speaker 2: as myself, who want to do something like this, and
[15:03] Speaker 2: we give them a training to help them get started
[15:07] Speaker 2: in ICUs and onward and upward.
[15:11] Speaker 1: Wow. First, let me just go back just a second.
[15:15] Speaker 1: I can't believe that there was a time where they
[15:17] Speaker 1: separated music and science as if it didn't have anything
[15:20] Speaker 1: to do with science, even with all the years of
[15:24] Speaker 1: proof beforehand.
[15:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm always amazed by that, actually. It's unbelievable.
[15:31] Speaker 1: But the next question is what happens? So when you
[15:34] Speaker 1: play for a critically ill patient, can you walk us
[15:37] Speaker 1: through a typical session?
[15:39] Speaker 2: Sure. I am currently, as you mentioned, I'm at MedStar
[15:44] Speaker 2: Georgetown University Hospital. I live in New York City, but
[15:47] Speaker 2: I take the train down every other week for a
[15:50] Speaker 2: few days. I'm there because they have an arts and
[15:53] Speaker 2: humanities program, which is run by a woman named Julia Langley.
[15:58] Speaker 2: And Julia... And several of her musicians came to workshops
[16:03] Speaker 2: I was giving before COVID when we were doing them
[16:07] Speaker 2: in a hospital at Berkshire Medical Center. So I got
[16:09] Speaker 2: to meet her and the musicians. And I found out
[16:13] Speaker 2: they're an internationally renowned arts and humanities program for a hospital.
[16:17] Speaker 2: They're really, really great. And this year, we did a
[16:23] Speaker 2: study with them during COVID where I recorded music. We
[16:28] Speaker 2: had great results with the study, and it's going to
[16:30] Speaker 2: be published soon and all of that. But this year,
[16:34] Speaker 2: Julia was able to get more money in her budget
[16:36] Speaker 2: to bring me down there. So when I go into
[16:41] Speaker 2: an ICU, the method is pretty established because, again, I've
[16:47] Speaker 2: been doing this 16 years. I did it for six
[16:49] Speaker 2: years in New York, my first six years at Beth
[16:53] Speaker 2: Israel Medical Center in downtown New York, which is now defunct.
[16:58] Speaker 2: It was closed down last year, very sadly to many
[17:01] Speaker 2: of us. But I had three, the first three years
[17:05] Speaker 2: was my on-the-job training because I have no formal training
[17:08] Speaker 2: in this. But I had on-the-job training, which was fantastic.
[17:13] Speaker 2: And so my process is very simple and straightforward. When
[17:17] Speaker 2: I arrive in the ICU, the first thing I do
[17:20] Speaker 2: is I go to the charge nurse and I find
[17:23] Speaker 2: out Who are the sickest patients in the unit at
[17:27] Speaker 2: that moment? And these are people who are in a
[17:30] Speaker 2: coma or intubated or heavily sedated, and they're really in
[17:34] Speaker 2: bad shape. That's where you start. Because I know, of course,
[17:38] Speaker 2: from this personal experience, that music can literally save your
[17:42] Speaker 2: life in a coma at the right moment. Is that rare?
[17:46] Speaker 2: It's probably rare. I have, on a number of occasions
[17:50] Speaker 2: in these 16 years, been able to do for someone
[17:52] Speaker 2: what my wife putting in the iPod did for me.
[17:56] Speaker 1: In real time, you were watching?
[17:58] Speaker 2: In real time.
[17:59] Speaker 3: Wow.
[17:59] Speaker 2: In real time. A number of times, a number of
[18:02] Speaker 2: times where somebody was right at the edge, and it
[18:06] Speaker 2: was very, very serious, and they were going down, and
[18:08] Speaker 2: I was brought in, and I would spend an hour there.
[18:12] Speaker 2: It's just a few times, but it has happened. The
[18:15] Speaker 2: last chapter of my book is actually an example of
[18:19] Speaker 2: one of those. The chapter is called Wild Horses. And
[18:23] Speaker 2: that's a giveaway to what the music that was the
[18:26] Speaker 2: key music for this patient. So going back to my
[18:31] Speaker 2: process in the unit, I will start with the sickest
[18:34] Speaker 2: people first. When I play, I will, oh, I can't
[18:41] Speaker 2: resist because the.
[18:42] Speaker 1: Guitar is right here.
[18:43] Speaker 2: You have to.
[18:44] Speaker 1: I love that. Do you find out what their favorite
[18:46] Speaker 1: song is?
[18:48] Speaker 2: Almost never. On rare occasion, you may. On rare occasion,
[18:52] Speaker 2: as I did in the chapter in the book, I
[18:55] Speaker 2: found out that this patient was a friend of Mick
[18:57] Speaker 2: Jagger and loved the Rolling Stones. So I played wild
[19:00] Speaker 2: horses for him. Most of the time, you're not going
[19:03] Speaker 2: to know. Very often in these situations, there's no one
[19:07] Speaker 2: else in the room. Occasionally this family, but in those settings...
[19:11] Speaker 2: And those settings, sometimes they'll tell you what the patient likes.
[19:14] Speaker 2: But most of the time, you don't know. So the
[19:17] Speaker 2: first thing that I do that I found to be
[19:19] Speaker 2: effective is an improvisation. And I'm just going to play
[19:25] Speaker 2: something for a few seconds.
[19:45] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[19:52] Speaker 2: I'll begin with something like that, and I didn't give
[19:54] Speaker 2: a second's thought to what I was going to do.
[19:56] Speaker 2: I just started playing. And I find that, first of all,
[20:01] Speaker 2: I happen to know, having studied on my own this stuff,
[20:06] Speaker 2: you're using a different part of your brain when you're
[20:09] Speaker 2: improvising than when you're playing a set piece. And I
[20:13] Speaker 2: found that there's a communication. And also, if I'm improvising
[20:17] Speaker 2: my own stuff, this is a belief that I have.
[20:21] Speaker 2: I can't prove this, but this is something that I believe.
[20:24] Speaker 2: When you go into a modern hospital in a big city,
[20:28] Speaker 2: you're playing from people from all over the world, different cultures,
[20:31] Speaker 2: all different cultures, different races, different religions, different creed, etc.
[20:38] Speaker 2: I believe that if you go in... I believe that
[20:54] Speaker 2: it's really the universal music there when you're playing from
[20:57] Speaker 2: your heart and you're letting the music just flow out
[21:02] Speaker 2: of you. So I will start with that. Then the
[21:08] Speaker 2: music that I'll go to and that I have found,
[21:11] Speaker 2: and it's a big part of my book, is there
[21:13] Speaker 2: have been studies done that the music of Johann Sebastian
[21:17] Speaker 2: Bach is extremely effective. Etcetera. That's a prelude by Bach,
[21:41] Speaker 2: which is one of my best penicillin pieces. The music
[21:45] Speaker 2: that I use the most, that I learned from experience,
[21:49] Speaker 2: I call my penicillin pieces. There is also a common
[21:54] Speaker 2: denominator in the music that you choose. You want everything
[21:57] Speaker 2: to be in a medium tempo. The human heartbeat ranges
[22:01] Speaker 2: between 60 and 100 beats per minute. Which is, in music,
[22:06] Speaker 2: a medium tempo. And so you're lining up. Now, there
[22:11] Speaker 2: is a concept of playing which is called entraining. And
[22:17] Speaker 2: entraining is that you're playing, you're matching the patient's heartbeat.
[22:23] Speaker 2: That can be effective. It's not always effective. And I actually,
[22:27] Speaker 2: I do believe in entraining, E-N, training, entraining. I do
[22:32] Speaker 2: believe in that. But I do that in training in
[22:37] Speaker 2: an emotional sense.
[22:38] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
[22:39] Speaker 2: Because, you know, in the medical musician initiative, in our training,
[22:47] Speaker 2: we use an acronym, MIETA, M-I-E-T-A, which in Polish means mint,
[22:54] Speaker 2: and I love mint ice cream. But M is for musicality.
[23:01] Speaker 2: And the quality of musicality most important in therapeutic music
[23:06] Speaker 2: is to be able to affect people in an emotional way.
[23:11] Speaker 2: That's musicality. Second is intuition. You have to be very intuitive.
[23:20] Speaker 2: It has to be your nature to be intuitive. And intuition,
[23:23] Speaker 2: by the way, is based on experience. It's not exactly
[23:26] Speaker 2: the same thing as instinct. Instinct really comes more from
[23:29] Speaker 2: the gut. Intuition is where you have experience in something
[23:37] Speaker 2: and you look at that patient and you get a
[23:40] Speaker 2: sense of, you intuit what you think is gonna be
[23:44] Speaker 2: most effective for them. So M-I-E is empathy. If you're
[23:49] Speaker 2: not an empathetic person, do not bother showing up because
[23:53] Speaker 2: when you're in an ICU, you're playing for very critically
[23:57] Speaker 2: ill people. You're playing for people. Most of the time,
[24:00] Speaker 2: it's the worst time of their life, and especially families around.
[24:03] Speaker 2: You have to be very empathetic. T is for teamwork.
[24:08] Speaker 2: And that's a fun one for me to describe because
[24:14] Speaker 2: the therapeutic musician has to understand where they are in
[24:18] Speaker 2: the totem pole in the ICU, in the hierarchy. And
[24:22] Speaker 2: where you are, you must understand, is that you're at
[24:25] Speaker 2: the very bottom. Mm-hmm. The attending physician is at the top,
[24:29] Speaker 2: and the director is at the top. The attendings are next,
[24:35] Speaker 2: and the nurses are actually next. After that, the resident doctor,
[24:40] Speaker 2: young resident doctors are next. Oh, I left out the
[24:43] Speaker 2: physician associate, which is also next to the top, right
[24:48] Speaker 2: under the director. Very important position is the PA, the
[24:51] Speaker 2: physician assistant. But lately, they're now saying physician associate, which
[24:56] Speaker 2: I think is better. And you have to understand because
[24:59] Speaker 2: when you walk into that unit and there are this
[25:02] Speaker 2: medical team there and you're a musician, the association with
[25:06] Speaker 2: being a musician also is what's the ego on that person?
[25:09] Speaker 2: Do they think they're a star? So on and so forth.
[25:13] Speaker 2: And you really have to have a very clear humility
[25:17] Speaker 2: when you're coming in. And the fun part, though, about
[25:20] Speaker 2: that is that as a medical musician, there are certain
[25:23] Speaker 2: things that as the medical musician, I can do better
[25:29] Speaker 2: than anything they have in there. One of them, one
[25:31] Speaker 2: of the examples is bringing down blood pressure. Now, music,
[25:35] Speaker 2: if you're playing very soothing music, and you're sitting two
[25:48] Speaker 2: feet away from that patient, and their blood pressure is
[25:50] Speaker 2: in the 160s, I can honestly say that hundreds and
[25:54] Speaker 2: hundreds of times, I've been in there where 20 minutes later,
[25:58] Speaker 2: the blood pressure was down to the 120s. I've just
[26:00] Speaker 2: done that a million times. And the important thing about
[26:05] Speaker 2: teamwork is that when the doctors and nurses see you
[26:10] Speaker 2: do that, then you're helping their patients and they accept
[26:16] Speaker 2: you as a team member. That's a crucial thing. Of
[26:20] Speaker 2: my ETA, A is the last letter.
[26:24] Speaker 3: Letter.
[26:26] Speaker 2: A is the last letter. Assessment. Assessment. And there's two
[26:30] Speaker 2: parts to assessment. One is very easy and one is
[26:33] Speaker 2: more difficult. The first part that's easy is you have
[26:37] Speaker 2: to know what the range of vital signs are. You
[26:40] Speaker 2: have to know what the range, as I said a
[26:43] Speaker 2: moment before, heart rate is between 60 and 100. Blood
[26:45] Speaker 2: pressure is A lot of us are familiar with, you
[26:51] Speaker 2: don't want to see it going much above 120. But
[26:54] Speaker 2: in an ICU, it's very common to see 130, 140.
[26:57] Speaker 2: It's a stressful environment. But once it gets over 160,
[27:00] Speaker 2: especially 165 is the danger zone. Once you go above that,
[27:05] Speaker 2: it's a very dangerous situation. But understanding the vital signs,
[27:10] Speaker 2: the oxygenation level, you need it over 90%. Yeah. The
[27:15] Speaker 2: respiration rate, it's between 12 and 24 breaths a minute.
[27:20] Speaker 2: You learn that that's pretty easy. So when you're playing
[27:23] Speaker 2: next to a patient, you're always looking at the patient
[27:25] Speaker 2: and then looking up at the vital signs computer monitor
[27:29] Speaker 2: over the bed. So you can keep track of that.
[27:32] Speaker 2: The other kind of assessment is... falls into what I
[27:36] Speaker 2: was saying earlier about it. It's really based on, uh,
[27:42] Speaker 2: connected to intuition. It's being able to look at a
[27:45] Speaker 2: patient and get a sense of where they are in
[27:48] Speaker 2: an ICU when they, most patients can't tell you anything. Uh,
[27:53] Speaker 2: they could be in a coma, they could be sedated,
[27:56] Speaker 2: or if they are awake, most of the time they're, uh,
[28:02] Speaker 2: in a very bad place and everything. Some small percentage,
[28:06] Speaker 2: maybe 10% of the time you can walk into a
[28:09] Speaker 2: room in an ICU, that person's sitting up in bed
[28:12] Speaker 2: and they're fine. You know, you want to share some
[28:15] Speaker 2: jokes and stuff, but that's a very small percentage. So
[28:19] Speaker 2: that's the, um, I, I go from finishing up this topic.
[28:25] Speaker 2: What do I do in the ICU? I start off
[28:27] Speaker 2: with the sickest patients and I make my way through. Um,
[28:32] Speaker 2: The very first thing I do, by the way, after
[28:34] Speaker 2: I've spoken to the charge nurse and gotten the bed
[28:38] Speaker 2: numbers of who's sickest, is because I use a strap
[28:42] Speaker 2: when I play the guitar. Most classical guitarists don't, but
[28:45] Speaker 2: I do. I use a strap. I do a promenade
[28:48] Speaker 2: through the entire unit, playing something very gentle, because when
[28:53] Speaker 2: the patients or family members We found early on that
[28:59] Speaker 2: if I just came in and sat at the nurse's
[29:01] Speaker 2: station and played and nurses asked patients, most of the
[29:05] Speaker 2: time they said no because was this going to be
[29:09] Speaker 2: an 18-year-old kid who was playing Metallica? And then I
[29:15] Speaker 2: started doing the promenade. One of the doctors recommended I
[29:18] Speaker 2: do that. And as you're walking past these rooms, they
[29:21] Speaker 2: hear a very lovely actual play. I'll play you the opening.
[29:24] Speaker 2: This is the piece I play every time. which I
[29:26] Speaker 2: learned when I was nine years old. I'll just see
[29:28] Speaker 2: the opening.
[29:51] Speaker 1: While you were doing that, the puppy in the background
[29:53] Speaker 1: just looked up like, oh, I like that song.
[29:56] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. She hears music four or five hours a day.
[30:01] Speaker 2: I bet she loves it. That's a little study for
[30:04] Speaker 2: the guitar written by the Italian composer Matteo Carcassi. It
[30:08] Speaker 2: was written around 1810. And it's just a lovely lyrical
[30:12] Speaker 2: little piece. And it gives everybody the chance to go, ah,
[30:16] Speaker 2: I want that. So I do the promenade. I go
[30:20] Speaker 2: to the sickest people first, and I make my way through.
[30:23] Speaker 2: At Georgetown, I spend four hours each day that I'm
[30:28] Speaker 2: there in the unit. I actually play for four hours.
[30:31] Speaker 2: I do about two hours, take a little break, and
[30:33] Speaker 2: then I do another two hours. And so the ICUs
[30:39] Speaker 2: at Georgetown are big ICUs. There are three of them.
[30:43] Speaker 2: neurosurgical ICU, transplant ICU, and a medical and surgical mixed ICU.
[30:51] Speaker 2: And each one has 24 beds. And there are days
[30:55] Speaker 2: that you're there where every bed is filled. So four
[30:59] Speaker 2: hours sometimes can be just enough to not even get
[31:02] Speaker 2: to everybody. Because you do want to play, ideally, you
[31:07] Speaker 2: want to play a minimum of 20 minutes at a bedside.
[31:10] Speaker 2: And the reason for that is, as I said before,
[31:14] Speaker 2: the brain is this wonderful pharmacy that creates chemicals. Well,
[31:18] Speaker 2: it doesn't do that instantly. It takes time. General rule,
[31:22] Speaker 2: it takes about 20 minutes to get that activated. So
[31:25] Speaker 2: I could be there. Sometimes I'll spend a half an
[31:29] Speaker 2: hour or more. On rare occasion with certain patients that
[31:33] Speaker 2: are very, very critical, very dangerous place that they're in,
[31:37] Speaker 2: I could be there for an hour. Uh, that doesn't
[31:41] Speaker 2: happen too often, but between 20 and 30 minutes is
[31:44] Speaker 2: the general rule.
[31:46] Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more of the music.
[31:48] Speaker 2: Save me podcast. Welcome back to the music. Save me podcast.
[31:59] Speaker 1: A lot of stuff we're learning about music now at
[32:01] Speaker 1: like in stroke victims and things of that nature where
[32:03] Speaker 1: they hear their favorite music and then they're able to
[32:06] Speaker 1: walk or talk and, um, It just dawned on me,
[32:10] Speaker 1: if we have everyone when they get their driver's license
[32:13] Speaker 1: or any type of thing like that, you should have
[32:15] Speaker 1: a favorite song on there too. So if anything happens
[32:18] Speaker 1: to you, like you're an organ donor and here's my
[32:20] Speaker 1: favorite song just in case you can pull me out
[32:22] Speaker 1: of a coma, you know?
[32:24] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[32:24] Speaker 1: That would help.
[32:25] Speaker 2: That's a great idea. Yeah. I do suggest to anybody
[32:30] Speaker 2: going into a hospital, it really, really makes a lot
[32:35] Speaker 2: of sense to make up a playlist.
[32:37] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[32:38] Speaker 2: And have that part of, especially if you're going into
[32:41] Speaker 2: a hospital and you're going to have surgery, make up
[32:45] Speaker 2: a playlist. Years ago when I returned after my whole situation,
[32:52] Speaker 2: when I was the patient, and I had a visit
[32:55] Speaker 2: with my primary care doctor, And he heard the whole story,
[32:58] Speaker 2: and he literally did that. He prepared an iPod with
[33:02] Speaker 2: all of his favorite music in it. It's a very,
[33:05] Speaker 2: very smart move.
[33:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that should be in all the hospitals.
[33:09] Speaker 1: That should be part of the directions when you're preparing
[33:11] Speaker 1: for surgery or preparing for it if you have the opportunity.
[33:14] Speaker 1: It should be in there like everything else.
[33:17] Speaker 2: Well, therapeutic music is each year now increasing in hospitals
[33:23] Speaker 2: all over the place. There are a lot of people.
[33:26] Speaker 2: that's starting to do this. And I find that the
[33:31] Speaker 2: doctors and nurses that I encounter, they're sold. They believe it.
[33:36] Speaker 2: They see it already. The important thing has to be the,
[33:40] Speaker 2: it has to be big effort to convince hospital administrators
[33:45] Speaker 2: to go for this because they control the purse strings.
[33:49] Speaker 2: And the other money situation is the insurance companies. and
[33:55] Speaker 2: having insurance pay for therapeutic music. They do already with,
[34:01] Speaker 2: in certain places, music therapists are, in order to be
[34:06] Speaker 2: a music therapist in a hospital, you did a college education,
[34:11] Speaker 2: and you also have to do an internship, and then
[34:17] Speaker 2: you have to be board certified. So it's a legal thing.
[34:21] Speaker 2: It's MT-BC.
[34:23] Speaker 1: Is there a difference between a medical musician and a
[34:25] Speaker 1: music therapist?
[34:27] Speaker 2: Yes. Music therapists in the field of music and medicine,
[34:36] Speaker 2: they have by far the greatest training. You do a
[34:42] Speaker 2: college four-year program. Some of them go on to get
[34:47] Speaker 2: a master's. Some go on to get a Ph.D., And
[34:51] Speaker 2: then you have to do this internship, and then you
[34:55] Speaker 2: have to go in front of a board, get board certified.
[34:58] Speaker 2: The Music for Healing and Transition program and some of
[35:03] Speaker 2: the harp programs that I know of, I'm a maverick.
[35:09] Speaker 2: My personal situation is very, very unusual. Again, I don't
[35:15] Speaker 2: have formal training, but I had wonderful informal training. I also,
[35:20] Speaker 2: in terms of, because I wrote a book, and my
[35:25] Speaker 2: book has a lot of science reportage, I had to
[35:28] Speaker 2: do a lot of research, et cetera, et cetera. I
[35:31] Speaker 2: learned a lot. And I have actually read the most
[35:36] Speaker 2: highly rated books in this field of music and medicine
[35:39] Speaker 2: to educate myself. But one of the things with the
[35:44] Speaker 2: Medical Musician Initiative that we are working on, which we
[35:49] Speaker 2: haven't been able to do yet is to find out
[35:53] Speaker 2: when the you know we can take I can take
[35:56] Speaker 2: a professional musician and in a few zoom sessions with
[36:02] Speaker 2: my partner Jerry Langlois we can take a professional musician
[36:09] Speaker 2: and give them most of what they need to know
[36:12] Speaker 2: to go into an intensive care unit and be effective
[36:16] Speaker 2: And when I say most, the final training is their
[36:20] Speaker 2: own experience of going in there and they find their
[36:22] Speaker 2: own way. But we don't have at this time yet
[36:25] Speaker 2: a board certification process. I have a certification, but it's
[36:30] Speaker 2: not a board certification. A doctor at Berkshire Medical Center, Dr.
[36:35] Speaker 2: Mark Pettis, who was the head of medical education at
[36:39] Speaker 2: the hospital and was an associate dean of the University
[36:43] Speaker 2: of Massachusetts Medical School, decided he wanted to help me.
[36:48] Speaker 2: And this is something quite wonderful. He shadowed me in
[36:51] Speaker 2: the ICU over a period of a few weeks. I
[36:53] Speaker 2: had at that time documentation of the number of hours.
[36:58] Speaker 2: This is back in 2018. I already had at that
[37:01] Speaker 2: time 1,800 hours playing in the ICUs. And he wrote
[37:07] Speaker 2: out a certification. I am a certified medical musician, but
[37:12] Speaker 2: it's not a board certification. So it doesn't have the
[37:15] Speaker 2: legal aspect that a board certification has. So I just
[37:20] Speaker 2: have this belief that there are wonderful professional musicians who
[37:28] Speaker 2: would be very inclined to want to do something that
[37:32] Speaker 2: is as heartfelt as this type of thing.
[37:36] Speaker 1: Life-changing.
[37:37] Speaker 2: And life-changing. And, you know, even though there are 10,000
[37:42] Speaker 2: music therapists in this country, 1,400... of the medical music practitioners,
[37:49] Speaker 2: that's the MHTP people, that's not enough to cover every
[37:53] Speaker 2: hospital in the country. No. So you still, you said earlier,
[37:59] Speaker 2: and I bless you for saying this, it should be,
[38:03] Speaker 2: therapeutic music programs should be in every hospital in the world.
[38:06] Speaker 1: Yes, they should.
[38:08] Speaker 2: And after all the things that I've shared with you
[38:10] Speaker 2: right now, the history of this therapeutic music culturally, and
[38:17] Speaker 2: the medical value that it has, it is kind of
[38:21] Speaker 2: astonishing that people don't get it, that it's not everywhere.
[38:25] Speaker 2: But that is changing. It is changing. It's going in
[38:28] Speaker 2: the right direction.
[38:29] Speaker 1: Well, thanks to you and a lot of the people
[38:32] Speaker 1: that you work with. I mean, you were the first
[38:34] Speaker 1: therapeutic musician that was admitted to the Society of Critical
[38:37] Speaker 1: Care Medicine. And now you're saying there's 10,000 people therapeutic musicians. So,
[38:45] Speaker 1: I mean, it is growing, which is good.
[38:48] Speaker 2: It is growing. And I'm very excited about SCCM, the
[38:52] Speaker 2: Society of Critical Care Medicine. I'm going to be attending
[38:58] Speaker 2: the annual Congress of SCCM in San Diego in March.
[39:03] Speaker 2: I'll be there March 14th through the 16th. Just a
[39:08] Speaker 2: month ago, we got the approval for the Therapeutic Knowledge
[39:12] Speaker 2: Education Group, which is the first group of its kind
[39:16] Speaker 2: at SCCM. And we're going to have a meeting at
[39:19] Speaker 2: the Congress and I'll have my guitar with me. Of course,
[39:24] Speaker 2: I always have my guitar with me since I'm eight
[39:26] Speaker 2: years old. Um, and, um, And Jerry Langlois is one
[39:34] Speaker 2: of the co-chairs. We have a third co-chair, Dr. Sergio
[39:39] Speaker 2: Zanotti of Houston, Texas. who is a remarkable critical care doctor.
[39:46] Speaker 2: He just became the CEO of an organization called Sound Physicians,
[39:53] Speaker 2: which is the biggest for-profit organization in the country that
[39:56] Speaker 2: staffs critical care units in hospitals all over the country.
[40:02] Speaker 2: And Sergio and Jerry and I, we have high hopes
[40:07] Speaker 2: for convincing doctors The 15,500 SCCM members in over 100
[40:15] Speaker 2: countries to bring music in.
[40:18] Speaker 1: You're so calm the way you're describing this. If I
[40:21] Speaker 1: had the knowledge that you had and the experiences that
[40:23] Speaker 1: you were going through and that you're doing now, I
[40:25] Speaker 1: would never get off the phone until everybody heard me
[40:29] Speaker 1: and I would be outside the hospital. I would be
[40:31] Speaker 1: waving signs. The MM workshops that you talk about are
[40:36] Speaker 1: online now. Who should sign up? The musicians, the clinicians?
[40:42] Speaker 2: Well, if you go to our medicalmusicianinitiative.org website, you'll see
[40:49] Speaker 2: on the homepage there's a link to our workshops page.
[40:55] Speaker 2: And what we've been doing is we have been training musicians.
[41:02] Speaker 2: We have had some very nice successes with that. We
[41:05] Speaker 2: had one of our players, Michael Bard, a guitarist, who
[41:09] Speaker 2: spent several years in the ICUs at the National Institute
[41:12] Speaker 2: for Health in Washington, D.C. We have a keyboard player
[41:16] Speaker 2: named David Jarvis, who is the medical musician with the
[41:20] Speaker 2: Institute for Music and Neurologic Function in Westchester, New York.
[41:25] Speaker 2: And a number of other musicians who have worked with us,
[41:30] Speaker 2: who have gotten positions in various hospitals around the country.
[41:35] Speaker 2: And the other thing that we're planning on, we haven't
[41:39] Speaker 2: done this yet, but we want to do it, and
[41:42] Speaker 2: we hope to do it with the KEG, the Knowledge
[41:46] Speaker 2: Education Group. I tell people I just started a KEG,
[41:50] Speaker 2: and they give me a funny look.
[41:51] Speaker 1: You want a beer.
[41:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. But I said, no, not that kind of KEG.
[41:56] Speaker 2: We also want to do workshops with doctors and nurses
[42:02] Speaker 2: to give them some training on and advice on how
[42:07] Speaker 2: to set up therapeutic music in their ICU. So if
[42:12] Speaker 2: you're listening to this right now and you're a doctor
[42:15] Speaker 2: or a nurse or a hospital administrator and this makes
[42:18] Speaker 2: sense to you, please contact us through the medicalmusicianinitiative.org and
[42:27] Speaker 2: we'll help you get started. And if you're a musician
[42:30] Speaker 2: and you want to learn more about how to do this,
[42:32] Speaker 2: same thing, just shoot us an email through our website
[42:36] Speaker 2: and we'll help you get started.
[42:38] Speaker 1: That's right. I couldn't have said it better myself. Medical
[42:40] Speaker 1: Musician Initiative. It's small. You don't take a salary. You
[42:44] Speaker 1: go and you play and you try to heal people
[42:47] Speaker 1: and bring them back from the brink. And it is
[42:49] Speaker 1: a beautiful thing. Your story is so beautiful.
[42:53] Speaker 3: And I.
[42:55] Speaker 1: Just think it's important that people consider maybe even donating
[42:59] Speaker 1: to the cause. And, um, you know, I'd like to,
[43:02] Speaker 1: you know, if you'd like to learn more about what
[43:04] Speaker 1: we're talking about, um, like Andrew just said, medical musician initiative,
[43:09] Speaker 1: that's a mouthful.org medical musician initiative.org initiative.org. Um, take a
[43:13] Speaker 1: workshop or make a tax deductible, a deductible donation. I'm,
[43:17] Speaker 1: I'm flummoxed. Everything that you've just said is still spinning
[43:20] Speaker 1: in my head, but boy, oh boy. Um, What an
[43:23] Speaker 1: incredible opportunity you have to change the world with music.
[43:27] Speaker 1: And you're doing it. So congratulations.
[43:29] Speaker 2: Well, thank you. But, you know, I'm going to put
[43:33] Speaker 2: this in perspective. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, music
[43:38] Speaker 2: saved my life. And among your listeners, there are people
[43:43] Speaker 2: who are going to listen who have had the experience.
[43:45] Speaker 2: When your life has actually been saved by something or somebody,
[43:50] Speaker 2: in my case it was something... and somebody was music
[43:54] Speaker 2: and an ipod and it was my wife she saved
[43:56] Speaker 2: my life and um you when i came out of
[44:01] Speaker 2: the coma and found out what happened um that's something
[44:06] Speaker 2: i'll never forget wendy came in it was the eighth
[44:09] Speaker 2: day i was in the coma for seven days and
[44:13] Speaker 2: it was the morning of the eighth day and i
[44:14] Speaker 2: was awake and um when she walked through the curtain
[44:20] Speaker 2: i looked at her and i said hi wendy And
[44:23] Speaker 2: that was the smile on her face, the once-in-a-lifetime smile,
[44:26] Speaker 2: because also people were, doctors were thinking I was going
[44:31] Speaker 2: to have brain damage, because I was in brain ischemia
[44:35] Speaker 2: for 17 minutes on the first night, and not enough
[44:38] Speaker 2: oxygen was reaching my brain. And I did have brain damage,
[44:42] Speaker 2: which we didn't find out until later, but.
[44:46] Speaker 2: I saw her. I knew her name. I didn't slur
[44:49] Speaker 2: my words. She was thrilled. And then she sat down
[44:53] Speaker 2: and she said exactly these words. Your surgery wasn't yesterday.
[44:57] Speaker 2: It was eight days ago. You went into shock and
[45:01] Speaker 2: they saved your life. And you don't have cancer. And
[45:08] Speaker 2: I was stunned. I was silent for a solid minute.
[45:14] Speaker 2: And For years afterwards, my wife would say that was
[45:17] Speaker 2: the longest I shut up other than when I'm playing
[45:19] Speaker 2: the guitar. And I was silent. And I thought of
[45:24] Speaker 2: a story that has to do with my father. Music
[45:28] Speaker 2: saved his life in World War II. It's a very
[45:30] Speaker 2: long story. I can't tell it now, but read the book.
[45:34] Speaker 2: And I looked around in that minute that I was silent.
[45:39] Speaker 2: And I saw an elderly woman in the bed across
[45:42] Speaker 2: the hall from me, and she looked terrible and just
[45:44] Speaker 2: so sad. And I heard moans and groans on both
[45:47] Speaker 2: sides of me. And it came to me immediately. I
[45:51] Speaker 2: knew I had to give back. I didn't have money
[45:54] Speaker 2: I could give back, but I knew I had my guitar.
[45:57] Speaker 2: And I turned to Wendy and I said, this place
[46:00] Speaker 2: is gloomy. And with what happened to me, you can't
[46:04] Speaker 2: thank God enough or your doctors and nurses or your
[46:07] Speaker 2: loved ones. to give thanks, you have to give something.
[46:12] Speaker 2: And then I said, I'm going to come back here
[46:14] Speaker 2: with my guitar. That's how it started. And it took
[46:18] Speaker 2: six months before I could get back because I had
[46:21] Speaker 2: to heal. I had to recuperate. On the very first
[46:27] Speaker 2: day that I was back, at the first hour, I
[46:31] Speaker 2: didn't know what to do. I just sat in front
[46:32] Speaker 2: of the nurse's station and put some beautiful music in
[46:34] Speaker 2: the air. And The two nurses who had been my
[46:38] Speaker 2: nurses when I was the patient, at the last five minutes,
[46:42] Speaker 2: came and stood on either side of me. And I
[46:44] Speaker 2: saw them looking at the patients, the beds, there were
[46:47] Speaker 2: three beds they could see in front of them, looking
[46:49] Speaker 2: at the computer monitors. And they turned to each other
[46:52] Speaker 2: and they smiled and they did a thumbs up. And
[46:55] Speaker 2: that was the inciting moment. That was the moment where
[46:59] Speaker 2: I knew I had found a new path in life.
[47:02] Speaker 2: So for me, you know, you're right. I don't take
[47:05] Speaker 2: a salary for this. And I used to tell people,
[47:11] Speaker 2: not I used to, I sometimes will tell people, the
[47:14] Speaker 2: best career move I ever made was to drop dead
[47:18] Speaker 2: on a gurney ride from an operating room to a
[47:20] Speaker 2: surgical intensive care unit. And people go, ha ha, and
[47:23] Speaker 2: don't say that, but ha ha. And they say, no, actually,
[47:26] Speaker 2: it's the best thing that ever happened to me. Not financially, but...
[47:31] Speaker 2: I was doing better financially as a musician before this,
[47:34] Speaker 2: but that doesn't matter to me. I found something that
[47:38] Speaker 2: has great meaning in life. I recently read a book
[47:44] Speaker 2: called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, which I'll
[47:50] Speaker 2: recommend to anybody. It's a fantastic book. I realized that,
[47:55] Speaker 2: in a sense, too, it gave me an insight into
[47:57] Speaker 2: how that music actually saved me in the coma. I
[48:02] Speaker 2: was three days in a coma with no sound of
[48:07] Speaker 2: music or anything and dying. And then that music came
[48:12] Speaker 2: into my ears, my favorite piece of music and my
[48:17] Speaker 2: favorite composer. And in my soul and in my heart
[48:22] Speaker 2: and soul and spirit, I heard that and I didn't
[48:26] Speaker 2: want to lose it. And I believe that as much
[48:30] Speaker 2: as the chemicals flowed through my body, the dopamine and
[48:34] Speaker 2: serotonin flowed, that's the emotional part. And the emotional part
[48:38] Speaker 2: is I didn't want to let go of that. And
[48:40] Speaker 2: it saved my life. So doing all of this for me,
[48:44] Speaker 2: you know, I'll do this. I like to say I
[48:47] Speaker 2: will do this until the day I die again.
[48:53] Speaker 1: You might want to think of stand-up a little bit, too.
[48:56] Speaker 1: I mean, music is amazing, but you're pretty good with
[49:00] Speaker 1: your comedic timing.
[49:01] Speaker 2: Well, I hate to tell you this, but in the 1980s,
[49:05] Speaker 2: I spent three years at the comedy clubs in New
[49:07] Speaker 2: York doing the Victor Borg of the guitar.
[49:09] Speaker 1: You're going to have to come back. I'm right next
[49:11] Speaker 1: to his old estate, so we're going to have to
[49:13] Speaker 1: talk to you again. Because we have another podcast, so
[49:16] Speaker 1: why not? Comedy saved me.
[49:17] Speaker 2: Okay. We'll do it. We'll do it.
[49:20] Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sharing your story and this
[49:22] Speaker 1: remarkable work with all of us it's been a true
[49:26] Speaker 1: honor to have you and to listen to you speak
[49:28] Speaker 1: and hear your story and all the amazing things that
[49:31] Speaker 1: you're doing and I can't stress again if you're listening
[49:34] Speaker 1: and if you'd like to learn more about the medical
[49:36] Speaker 1: musician initiative because my mouth's working now um please visit
[49:40] Speaker 1: medical musician initiative.org. And you can also find Andrew's memoir.
[49:44] Speaker 1: I don't want to forget waking the spirit. I'm Lynn Hoffman.
[49:47] Speaker 1: He is Andrew Schulman. And I am just blessed to
[49:51] Speaker 1: have had this moment with you. This has been music.
[49:53] Speaker 1: Save me. Thank you for listening.
[49:55] Speaker 2: Lynn. I love doing this with you. It was great.
[49:58] Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
[49:59] Speaker 1: Oh my God. I wish I could jump through the
[50:00] Speaker 1: screen and give you a hug. You're like the happiest
[50:02] Speaker 1: person I've ever met. I'm Buzz Knight, and thanks for
[50:08] Speaker 1: listening to Lynn Hoffman and the Music Saved Me podcast,
[50:12] Speaker 1: produced by Buzz Knight Media Productions. Please check out our
[50:15] Speaker 1: other shows, Taking a Walk Nashville, hosted by Sarah Harrelson,
[50:19] Speaker 1: Comedy Saved Me, hosted by Lynn Hoffman, and Taking a
[50:22] Speaker 1: Walk in Jersey Made, both hosted by yours truly.
[50:26] Speaker 2: All shows are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and are
[50:30] Speaker 2: part of the iHeart Podcast Network.

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