Re: [Harp-L] Re: Help wanted for Harmonica Medical/Scientific Study

[David Brown <nonidesign@xxxxxxxxx>]

Not directly related, but perhaps worth mentioning, is an incident that
happened to me on Aug 15th 2007.

 I was driving home with my daughter when an oncoming car pulled in front of
us and hit us head on at about 45mph. My daughter suffered a broken
collarbone and a deeply lacerated eye. I suffered a broken patella on my
right knee. We both had surgery. She is fine now and fully recovered. I had
surgery and was recovering at home  when I felt weak and short of breath. I
had to be rushed to ER where I was given a CAT scan as I was going through
the most excrutiating pain in my life. Results showed I had thrown a big 2cm
blood clot from my injured knee. It had lodged in my right lung, caused an
infarction, and I was having a pulmonary embolism (I may be messing up the
tech description but I'm no doctor, so forgive me). The doctors gave me less
than a 7% chance of making it (where the heck do they get numbers like
that?). I thought I was going to bite it.

After 3 days in intensive care I had, by some miracle, survived. I'm not
overly religious, but anyone out there who is familiar with what I described
knows that it is extremely rare that anybody makes it through this, ever.

While going through rehab I had to report to a Cardiologist for routine
inspections. I was given a test where you draw in a breath on a device that
looks like a bong and try to raise a ping pong ball up a tube. Even during
the first test I could pull that thing up about 6 inches and was able to top
it by the third visit. The doc was impressed and called my surgeon, who
explained that even though my right lung was almost completely blocked I had
somehow been able to process oxygen to a measureable degree throughout the
ordeal. That, and the fact that the clot didn't pass any further than my
lung, were major reasons I didn't die. It was also the main reason I hadn't
suffered any brain damage.

Even today, with permanent scarring from the incident, I have no issues from
the whole thingl other than a slight pain when I draw in very very deeply.
My playing has been completely unaffected and I can't tell you how great it
felt the first time I played harp after it all. Both my surgeoin and my
cardiologist have absolute belief that my playing harp for over 30 years
saved my ass, kept me from becoming brain damaged, and sped my recovery.




On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 9:27 PM, Jim Rossen <jimjimdr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> John-
>
> I applaud your project to investigate harmonica playing as a means of
> maintaining or improving pulmonary function.  Have your studies shown
> any effect of playing on pulmonary function/physiology?
>
> What is the rationale for using harmonica instead of an incentive
> spirometer or similar device?
>
> I wonder if harmonica playing could improve pulmonary physiology by a
> mechanism other than improved bellows function.   Could the repeated
> acceleration of air that occurs with harmonica (perhaps more than with
> a spirometer) possibly improve pulmonary clearance of particulate?  In
> that case, maybe significant benefit would be observed only in people
> with a big particulate load (or reduced pulmonary clearance?), like
> smokers.
>
> Jim R
>