The Whys & Hows

When I first had the idea for this project about a year ago, I ran it by a handful of colleagues to see what their opinions were. Most of them were excited about it, but I was surprised that a few colleagues simply didn’t get it. They asked me, “Aren’t you an advanced pianist?” and, “Why would you go back and study the things you’re teaching?” They even asked me, incredulously, “Don’t you already know your scales?” Their reactions kind of shook me. I mean, yes, I’ve studied my scales. Yes, I’m teaching plenty of elementary and intermediate level students. Yes, I’ve played pieces at every level of the RCM piano syllabus. But, always lacking a little in the self confidence department, I shuffled back to my corner and thought, “What will my peers, my students, my students’ parents, OMG THE WORLD think of me if I declare that I’m going back to the beginning???” I shelved the project.

It kept nagging at me, though. I knew that this was something from which I would benefit. I enrolled my first students in RCM exams. I saw them succeed. I saw them gain so much confidence from preparing for this really involved, challenging, new thing. I wanted that for myself, and my self esteem was waning.

I have a condition called Essential Tremor. Basically, it means that I shake. It used to be referred to as Benign Essential Tremor, but activist groups came out and said, “Hey! This condition may not kill us, but in the way it affects our quality of life, it sure isn’t ‘benign,’ either!” So now most of the medical community is referring to it as Essential Tremor or ET. Mine started to come on when I was a teenager. I remember being 13 and taking my turn in our 8th grade speech class, giving a demonstration speech, showing everyone how my nifty mechanical metronome (an indestructible Wittner Super Mini Taktell) worked. Except that it didn’t work… my hands were shaking so badly that I couldn’t hold it up for all to see and still let it tick. I was an anxious kid, though, and since the tremor initially showed up when I was in a performance situation, we just attributed it to nerves.

But it never got better. In fact, it got worse. I was shaking all the time. In my twenties, a doctor finally said, “Do you want some medication to help with that?” And so began the medical treatment of my ET. I tried lots of medications between the ages of about 25 and 38, but the one that worked the best was a beta blocker. It controlled the tremor enough that I could execute simple tasks like eating soup from a spoon or buttoning my clothes. And, it allowed me to play piano. Plus, I’d just adapted my piano technique over the years to account for the shaking. I had a lot of tension in my forearms as I tried to gain a little more control, and I learned how to compensate for the shakes when I played scales or chords or did octave reaches.

I also had the tremor in my voice. Again, as a teen, we didn’t really realize what it was. I was told I had a lot of vibrato that I needed to learn to control. I tensed all of my singing anatomy in an effort to gain that control. It just became the way that I sang. As with my piano technique, I was getting the job done, and very few folks questioned it. And, as with any medical condition, especially pre-internet, there wasn’t as much common or widespread knowledge about it. It beat on my self esteem as I tried to control this uncontrollable shaking. All my efforts at control just made it all worse. And I simply resigned myself to never being very good at playing the piano or singing… or at least not as good as my peers. (Note that there is evidence to the contrary… I did just fine. All you have to do is look at my grades and my rep lists from my music study. But, self esteem and internal judgement don’t always like to work with hard evidence.)

At the age of 38, though, everything changed when I went to see my neurologist and he said that my recent fainting episodes were a result of my beta blocker dosage being too high, and that he could not continue to prescribe to me at that dose. ET is a progressive condition, though, and my tremor was getting worse and worse. I’d tried all other medication options. What was I to do?

Brain surgery. That’s what I was to do.

In July and August of 2015 I had Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). I had a series of three operations where they inserted a pacemaker-like device into the movement center in my brain and attached it to a battery pack that resides right over my right clavicle. A wire runs up the side of my neck (under the skin) and into two dime-sized holes in my skull that are plugged up with something I imagine to look like the rubber stoppers we stuck pipettes through in high school chemistry class. I turn the device on in the morning, and it sends electricity into my brain which evens out the signals to the various parts of my body that were shaky. And, magically, within a few seconds of turning it on, I’m no longer tremoring. I turn my DBS off at night to preserve battery life, and within a minute or so of turning it off, I look like a Parkinson’s patient. People are amazed to see the effect that the DBS has. It’s profound. It’s, quite honestly, a miracle.

The brain is an amazing thing, though. My brain had spent so many years compensating for a tremor that when it was gone, I initially didn’t know how to function! Everyday tasks came back pretty easily. Within days I was able to eat off a spoon again, drink from a full coffee cup, and get two Advil without spilling the whole bottle. I had to do some speech therapy. One of the known side effects of DBS is sort of a lazy tongue; the speech center of the brain is right next to the movement center. I did a month or two with a speech therapist, and I was no longer slurring words. But the specialized stuff…. piano, guitar, singing… that all took more work.

I started with a voice teacher who has worked with me to develop a healthy singing technique. She continually reminds me that I am singing with a “new instrument.” And it’s true. My body is not the same. I woke up one day, and I essentially had a new instrument to work with. I’ve made big strides vocally. On piano, I worked on retraining myself. I played easy scales. I worked out of my students’ Dozen a Day books. And it got better. But it never got back to where I was pre-surgery. So, this fall, I was in a place where I could work with a piano teacher, too. And I decided that this was the time. This was when I would bring back my idea for stepping through the RCM exam program one rung at a time. So here we are.

Now, it just so happened that I had this major thing happen to me that changed my entire body map around and left me flailing a little bit. It’s an interesting story, and so that’s why I tell it. But would this still be just as worth a project if I’d never had any of these issues?

Yes.

I really want to accent the fact that I believe in lifelong education and learning. I believe that if we are to be effective as educators, we need to continue being learners. We can’t forget what it’s like to be a beginner at something. We can’t forget what it’s like to take on a new task. The minute we forget, we risk our teaching becoming stale. We risk losing the connection we have with our students, and the understanding we have when they struggle with something new or difficult. And, as lifelong learners, we develop a certain credibility with our students. They see us taking on new things. We are role models for them. So, even had I not had this whole ET/DBS adventure, I’d still want to be learning.

And I go back to the handful of colleagues who thought this was a silly idea. They are very capable music educators. I hope that someday they run into this blog and see it for what it is… a teacher exploring learning and taking her current challenges head-on. It’s not silly. In fact, I really feel this is the most valuable thing we can do as educators.