Music therapy is a mood-lifter

She walks the hospital halls with Dansko clogs on her feet and a Fender guitar on her back.

She pops into the rooms of young patients, bringing a song, her heart and to four girls who can't see the spring blossoms outside the best medicine they got all day. Music.

“Hello, Leila, hello,” a gowned Bridget Shevlin sang softly to a big-eyed, curly-haired 2-year-old who is recovering from a September transplant of her liver, small bowel and pancreas.

In the course of Leila's long stay at the Nebraska Medical Center, she has encountered a bevy of medical professionals. But this woman with the shoulder-length brown hair and clear, easy voice is the first healer to visit Leila's room holding a degree and certification in music.

The restorative power of music was documented well before anyone felt good listening to James Brown. The Islamic intellect Abu Nasr al-Farabi's 13th century treatise on music described its effects on the soul. Robert Burton's 17th century treatise on melancholy referenced music as a way to stave off the blues.

But it wasn't until after the two World Wars when recovering veterans responded to musicians that music therapy became a formal field of study in this country. Michigan State University launched the first undergraduate program in 1944 (though that program closed in 2009 because of shrinking enrollment and a lack of funding).

The American Music Therapy Association established curricular and clinical standards of practice when it was formed in 1950.

Researchers since then have studied the myriad ways music improves mental and physical health, whether coaxing speech out of stroke patients or softening the edges of behavior-disordered children. Music therapy is used in schools, psychiatric facilities and hospitals, where music can help alleviate pain, improve a patient's mood and alternately promote physical movement or calm nerves.

However, the established benefits of music therapy didn't lead the Nebraska Medical Center to create a position for Shevlin, a Berklee-educated, board-certified music therapist.

Another singer did.

Mary Heistand-Bro, formerly of Harlan, Iowa, was devastated when her 27-year marriage ended. She couldn't sleep. She had anxiety attacks.

The mother of two grown children moved to Omaha and decided to audition for Opera Omaha, a daring act for a middle-aged woman who hadn't sung at that level for 25 years. Her formal training dated back to college. Told she'd land a spot if she'd renew voice lessons, Heistand-Bro looked up her old college professor and started training. She sang in “Aida” and “Pirates of Penzance.”

Through it all, Heistand-Bro started sleeping better. She no longer needed anti-anxiety medication. She mentioned this to her voice teacher, who said: Well, yeah. You're breathing, you're doing something you love, music is meditative ...

Heistand-Bro was fascinated and wanted to spread the word. Her teacher knew a doctor at the Nebraska Medical Center. Heistand-Bro, who had sold her ownership stake in an insurance call center, gave $100,000 to fund a part-time therapist there for five years. She hopes the medical center can find permanent funding and expand the program full-time.

So does the hospital, which would like to do its own research on the health benefits of music therapy.

Those benefits seemed obvious during a recent afternoon with Shevlin.

The 29-year-old western New York native had spent the day at her regular job with the Omaha Public Schools. Shevlin uses music to help high school-age students who, because of language barriers or mental health diagnoses, lag so far behind their peers they don't attend regular schools.

Shevlin then spends four weekday afternoons and half of Saturday on the fifth and sixth floors of the Nebraska Medical Center where, on this recent day, she strummed that Johnny Cash-black guitar with gloved fingers.

Leila, a toddler who can't yet toddle, stared at the guitar, her brown eyes widening.

The two sat on the floor, an array of percussive instruments spread before them.

Leila smiled, her pink flower barrette keeping a tumble of black curls away from the feeding tube in her nose. She reached first for a star-shaped board that banged when you struck it. Bang!

She reached for the guitar strings, fingered the paddle-shaped drum, waved a drumstick, shook a banana maraca and then ... Nirvana! Leila grabbed a handled instrument ringed with silver beads that made a shake-a-shake-a sound.

“Leila,” sung Shevlin in a clear, easy soprano. “Feel the cabassa rolling. Feel it rolling on your hand?”

Shevlin stroked the child's slippered feet: “Leila, feel the cabassa rolling. Feel it rolling on your feet?”

Painted clouds on the ceiling softened the institutional feel of Leila's room. So did the purple bookshelf holding toys and pink plastic hospital-issue tubs labeled “diapers” and “clothes and socks.”

Tacked to the wall was a paper that read: “Pain Management. Why It Is Important.” On a chair sat a little stuffed military man wearing camouflage. Its face featured a photograph of a soldier. Leila's dad.

James Logan is in Iraq. Toni Logan, Leila's mom, sent her two oldest children to relatives in California while she juggles selling the family's Missouri house with living in a downtown Omaha hotel with her 5-month-old son. He, like Leila, was born with the same blood-clotting disorder that, if not managed, could kill his small intestine.

Twice since September Toni tried to take Leila “home” to the hotel. Twice they returned to the hospital because of infection.

Children spend months in the medical center's nationally renowned liver, small bowel and pancreas transplant program. Because doctors must suppress their immune systems to keep their bodies from rejecting the new organs, these little patients face grave risk outside the hospital in the months after surgery.

Days are long, marked by the cycling of nurses, doctors and therapists. Movies, kid events and a hospital school help break up the monotony.

So does Shevlin.

Lisa McClane, director of the hospital's Child Life Center and Shevlin's boss, casts Shevlin's role very simply: How can she help a child be a child?

When that child is 17-year-old Sara Wiley of Early, Iowa, the answer is a laptop and recording software. Sara's cystic fibrosis has made her all too familiar with the Nebraska Medical Center.

Her blue press-on fingernails clicked madly at a tiny laptop and cell phone when Shevlin walked in. Seated on her bed, Wiley was Skyping, typing and texting. Her Advanced Placement history book sat in the corner.

Sara pulled up a song she had written last year one of 38 she's composed and with a few apprehensive looks to Shevlin, agreed to sing in front of people.

Sara had written “Falling, Falling” after seeing a YouTube video.

Shevlin sidled up to the side of the bed, maneuvering a bulky recliner.

“You're going to have to tell me how you think it will go,” she said. “And I will try my hardest to transpose without the lyrics.”

Sara swigged bottled water. Her left dimple deepened as she flashed a nervous smile and sang in a giggly-at-first soprano: “I'm falling, falling down.”

Shevlin quickly picked out the tune on her guitar.

“It's in C, I think. Do you want rhythm behind it?”

Shevlin reached into her pocket and pulled out a pink pick. Suddenly the room came alive.

Sara sang a line. Shevlin picked out the tune. They did it together. And repeated.

Shevlin told Sara to be more confident.

Sara crossed her hands – her left wrist marked with a white hospital ID tag, the right with sparkly bangles and Lance Armstrong's yellow rubber “LIVESTRONG” bracelet and stared at her computer screen reading lyrics and singing.

Her voice grew stronger. Clear as a bell. No inkling of the back-pounding therapy she needs to break up the mucus filling her lungs.

Shevlin leveled her green eyes at Sara and the two began a Lennon-and-McCartney back-and-forth as they recorded on Shevlin's laptop.

They listened as Sara's voice came from the tinny speaker.

“When you love someone, the way I think I love you, you lose track of things you're doing and the life that you're pursuing ... ”

Shevlin: “What do you think?”

Sara: “Well, I don't like my voice. Obviously.”

Shevlin: “Sure you do. Give yourself a little pat on the back.”

A few more rounds, and Sara smiled.

Shevlin: “What do you think?

Sara: “I guess I like it. I think it's good.”

Shevlin: “I do, too.”

“We're going to do another one tomorrow,” Shevlin told her. “Because you have 38! Then you'll have a three-disc compilation!”

Shevlin then toted her guitar and a binder labeled “Tween” into Luz Lugo Cota's room.

The 10-year-old is the oldest of three Lugo Cota girls, all born with the same rare intestinal disorder, microvillus inclusion disease. Luz twice has undergone organ transplant surgery her liver and small bowel in 2005 and then liver, small bowel and pancreas in 2008. Vicky, 8, also has had two transplant surgeries: her liver and small bowel in 2004 and then small bowel transplant March 1.

Little Fatima, who turned 1 on Friday, is undergoing a clinical trial therapy. Transplant surgery could be in her future.

All three have been in and out of the hospital.

Just as Shevlin was getting settled with Luz, a hospital bed ferrying Vicky wheeled by and the long-haired child squealed: “BRIDGET!!!!”

“We sang one of the Jonas Brothers!” Luz crowed.

“Ohhhh,” Vicky sighed.

“Hahahahaha!”

Luz enjoyed rubbing this in. Hospital life has not changed sibling rivalry.

Soon enough, nurses had unhooked Vicky from the bed and settled her in the recliner, hip-to-hip with Luz. Like eager karaoke singers, they flipped through Shevlin's song binder.

So many songs, so little time. Here were the themes from “Beauty and the Beast” and “Little Mermaid.” Hannah Montana. And ...

JONAS BROTHERS!

In a room where the beeping machines, flow of nurses and picture of Jesus taped to the headboard are reminders of what it takes to get these little girls healthy, a few guitar strums and boy-band lyrics offered a bit of normalcy.

Luz and Vicky rocked out, eyes shining, Vicky keeping time with a sassy head bob.

In loud, happy and not at all on-key voices, they crooned:

“Music is my soooul, I can hear it. ... Music's got controool. And I'm never letting go, noooo, noooo. I just wanna play my music.”

Contact the writer:

444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com

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