When My Husband Survived Brain Cancer, His Doctor Made 1 Suggestion. It Ended Up Changing My Life Instead.

In December 2022, two weeks before Christmas, I found my husband, Ted, lying on the ground of our brand-new home, the house he had just finished building, unable to move.

A visit to a major Boston hospital would reveal a reasonable-to-doctors yet unfathomable-to-us answer to his change in personality, his sleep-filled days, his unbalanced saunter and his poor vision. He had been living with an inoperable brain tumor located deep in his thalamus, otherwise known as the control center of the brain, with links to motor skills, breathing functions and memory. To remove it meant the risk of paralysis, immobility and, scariest of all, death.

We were devastated, but hopeful. Ted was just happy to have explanations for the debilitating ailments he’d been living with for nearly a decade.

After emergency brain surgery, 16 rounds of radiation and 12 rounds of oral chemotherapy over the course of a year, Dr. Wen, a world-renowned neuro-oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, advised Ted to do this one thing that would help improve his memory and cognition: learn to play an instrument.

“Really?” We both looked at each other and laughed at the synchronicity. His doctor explained that taking up a new skill — specifically, playing an instrument — was nearly miraculous for both cognition and memory. I joked that horns were making a comeback in music these days, and that we should dust off his childhood trumpet and start practicing Miles Davis’ version of “It Never Entered My Mind.”

But getting up and moving was hard for Ted in those first few months of treatment. He was completely wiped, his body poisoned by the drugs that were saving him.

“I instantly feel old,” he professed one day when I asked what his new normal felt like.

When he had recovered enough to return to work, he did so willingly. He’s not the kind of guy who can sit around for long. But with working and trying to be present for our family, there wasn’t much wiggle room for him to take on another task, even if it did sound like a fun hobby.

The day he popped his last chemo pill is the day I popped my first antidepressant. I had become burned out, which resulted in my own seemingly insignificant health issues, comparatively. Headaches, fatigue, depression and anxiety were the results of stress that, like molten lava, had to erupt somehow after flowing into my nervous system so ferociously. I thought of what the doctor had said about learning an instrument and I took to the internet, immediately mesmerized by what I found.

I discovered that music has been used for years to not only create new neural pathways in the brain but to increase feelings of euphoria, help ease depression symptoms, and reduce the one thing I needed help with the most: stress.

I turned to the Yamaha sitting in our living room, used more as a decorative piece of furniture than an instrument, and decided to give it a shot. Serendipitously, it was a gift from Ted during our third Christmas together. I mentioned once how I had always loved the piano but never learned to play it and, voilà, it appeared out of thin air like the best kind of surprises do.

I grew up playing violin. My oldest sister played violin, so that meant I had to play it too, as did my other two older siblings. Even though we had the most out-of-tune upright in our living room growing up, I never did take piano lessons, and I never could read both clefs of sheet music. I didn’t understand why my parents wouldn’t sign me up, even though I’d asked multiple times. But now that I have three children of my own, I can see how everyone playing one instrument made life so much easier.

I tried reading sheet music. It was challenging, like reading without bifocals. The treble clef was sharp and clear, while the bass clef might as well have been a blurry mess for how well I understood it. YouTube offered quick assistance.

It took about three days to play one song in its entirety. I started with “If I Could Fly” by One Direction because my kids and I had taken a liking to the group’s music and it was the only One Direction song that Ted could stand. It’s still the only song I can easily play by heart.

I never became great at playing, but it sparked something in me that I couldn’t ignore. A door that opened up a new world, a world I felt I was always meant to be in. I began pouring my life into music, reading every scientific study, every article, asking people what music means to them. Every time I dug deeper, allowing myself to be immersed in the beauty of sound, I felt like I was having what famed psychologist Abraham Maslow called a “peak experience” ― a transcendent moment of joy.

I started writing and sharing my experiences, speaking at my kid’s music school about the correlation between music and wellness, after enrolling in a course of the same name at Berklee College of Music. I became Sadie, Sadie, Music Lady, whose mission is to help spread awareness about the importance of music in schools and in our lives ― because keeping this knowledge to myself wouldn’t be very rock ‘n’ roll of me.

While Ted still hasn’t picked up an instrument ― working 9 to 5 in a physical job takes a toll on his recovering body ― Dr. Wen’s suggestion changed our lives. Adding music in various ways resulted in more laughter, more tears, more dancing, more meaning.

Suzanne Hanser, chair emerita and professor of music therapy at Berklee College of Music, tells me that “even singing along to music or playing some percussion along with listening can engage more brain activity.” And with a house filled with music, Ted has certainly been belting more these days ― to the likes of Hozier, The Band and any song I can make sense of on the piano.

We’ve had incredible experiences together, traveling to shows around the world and in our hometown, sharing our emotions and creating precious memories along the way. Our kids have seen musical acts from Ed Sheeran to Giant Rooks in just about every concert hall in Boston. They’re learning how to express themselves, they’re learning about the world around them, and they’re using music as a tool for motivation and meditation.

And because the keyboard is in the living room, my kids have been privy to my progress. They see me hunt and peck, play and replay, mess up and start over endless times. There are days when I forget it all and have to start over, and days when I can play about the only 10 songs I know. Songs by popular artists like Adele and Harry Styles and Damien Rice.

Those days, everyone in the family sings along or sits quietly, playing with Lego bricks while listening. On the “off days” when I’m learning something new or messing up, they’re learning something, too.

The soundtrack to our lives has also become a medication of sorts. Music didn’t take away Ted’s tumor. And unless technology catches up quickly, nothing will. For now though, he’s stable and doing well. We’re so grateful for what music did give us: healing as a family and a life filled with intention, creativity, inspiration and, most of all, new memories together.

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