Can Music resurrect you?
May 5th 2008 06:44
Signature Tune
Music pushes critically ill teen to recovery
A normal headache threatened 14-year-old Justine Cantrell’s life, but music brought her back.
She was found unconscious on the floor.
Justine had an arterio-venous malformation (AVM), and it had burst. Blood had pooled in her brain and caused unknown damage, meaning she needed immediate surgery.
“When the surgery was finished, the surgeon painted a bleak picture,” Clint said. “He said she may never wake up again.”
And she was on a respirator that breathed for her.
Even though Justine was still unconscious, Kinney and his sax-playing friend Dennis Taylor visited her and began playing.
“I got in her face and pretended like I was in class,” Kinney said. He yelled like he does to get his students ready to start practice.
Then Taylor played a scale routine to warm up. And Justine stirred. Her breathing rate doubled from six breaths a minute to 12.
Taylor played some jazz and blues tunes. And Justine began breathing on her own.
“When we were done they took her off the respirator and she woke up that afternoon,” Kinney said.
With each visit Justine got better.
“I was just thinking stimulation …” Kinney said. “I hoped it would and prayed it would (help), but I has no idea it would be so profound.”
“We feel like he’s the reason she was (taken) off the respirator,” Rayna said.
AVMs are congenital malformations of blood vessels. Often thought of as short circuits, AVMs are found where capillaries are absent.
Many people with AVMs have no idea. Typically they are found by accident when a patient needs a brain scan for some other reason or they rupture.
Justine’s AVM ruptured that morning causing her headache and collapse. At Vanderbilt a neurosurgeon performed an emergency embolization, or plugging of the ruptured vessels.
When the AVM ruptured, it caused more than a cup of blood to pool on the left side of her brain causing stroke-like symptoms.
Justine was only 7 years old when her father died in 2001 and she was 10 when her mother died. Orphaned, she was left her in the care of her older brother Clint and his wife Rayna.
“She’s our oldest child. I don’t look at her as a sister-in-law,” Rayna said, adding there’s a 21-year difference between Justine and Clint.
Clint said when their mother died, he took his sister in even though he and Rayna have two kids of their own, Savannah, 5, and Jackson, 7.
“It’s not responsibility as much as what we had to do,” Clint said. “She had a lot of emotional trauma in her life and I wanted to give her a stable environment.”
And he did. Justine had risen to the top of her class at Central Middle School and played “a central part in the Central Band” as a saxophone player, Kinney said.
“She’s brilliant,” Clint said, adding his sister was an avid reader. “She’s always been a kid who seemed to be beyond her years.”
To bring her back, the doctor encouraged as much stimulation as possible as soon as possible. This suggestion inspired Kinney to visit with a fellow saxophone player the following morning.
And within the first week after the AVM ruptured, Justine could play parts of songs on her saxophone, even though she couldn’t speak or read a written word.
She is still having trouble speaking and she can’t even remember her ABC’s or count to 20.
“She was a ravenous reader. Now she can’t read at all but, because music is a different part of the brain, she can read music,” Rayna said.
Clint said Justine has short-term memory, speaking and reading problems, but he’s hoping for a full recovery.
“She’s scrappy,” Rayna said. “But she’s having to relearn from the beginning.”
To help Justine on the long road to recovery, Kinney has organized two benefit shows and he dedicated Central’s Jazz Band’s performance at JazzFest to Justine.
Extracted excerpts from Tennessee's The Post
By MICHELLE WILLARD, Post Staff Writer – May 4, 2008
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