I have turned a corner on this lupus flare--thanks to Prednisone--plenty of it. My hands are still on fire and fingers feel like sizzling sausages. This flare involves alopecia. I have lost about 30-40% of my hair. Thank goodness I had plenty to start. The fever decided to leave and fatigue has self-invited. This has been a wake-up call. I auto-pilotted lupus in my life for over 25 years. Almost 10 major surgeries, hundreds and thousands of $ of modern pharmaceuticals have sustained me. MRIs, X-rays and biopsies of all sorts have invaded my rather salvaged physical body.
MUSIC, it has been music all along, that has me alive, upright and dignified. It seems so obvious to my family, colleagues, friends and students that May Tucker means MUSIC and vice versa!! Yet I just recently realized in the utmost, deepest part of my being that MUSIC is not only my profession and identity. MUSIC is the anchor of my soul. I even surprised myself. Years and years of fermenting the beauty and techniques in piano, voice, conducting and organ is only the surface. The packaging.
In light of sounding marsh, one of my favorite sayings is, "There IS a song for everything!". Let me tell you about my songs and how they are imprinted in my soul (humming inside my head silently):
1. "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" 1-2 verses---every 8 weeks when I go in for lab--about 8 big vials of blood is drawn
2. "Twelve Days of Christmas" and "Do Re Mi"---Hip MRIs (8x), knee (5x) every other one
3. "Fur Else"---Head MRIs (5-7x), the entire song. There are 5 different segments in head MRIs
4. "Happy Birthday to You" (1x)---per each articular injection (finger joints)
5. "世上只有媽媽好"-"In the World only Mother is the Best" (1x in Mandarin)---getting myself out of bed, also one of Preston's lullabies
6. "Gial Sole Dal Gange" 1 verse---getting to the shower
7. "Tchaikovsky Concerto in B Flat" first 3 pages---knee injections
8. "Chopin Piano Etude in E Major" and "Brandenburg Concerto-Spring" (yes I can sing the entire Spring)---driving to UC Davis Cancer Center
9. "Maiden's Prayer"---walking into and waiting to see my hematologist in the Cancer Center
10. "O We Ain't Got a Barrel of Money"---chest X-rays
11. "How Great Thou Art" (3 verses)---needle tests in buttocks and legs
12. "Abide with Thee" (3 verses)---visual field tests
13. "There Must Have Been Something Good"---waiting to be injected with whatever
14. "You Are My Sunshine" (x's as needed)---start a IV line
15. "Beethoven Apathetigue 2nd Mov't"---epidual injections, kidney biopsy and bone marrow biopsy
16. "When I Fall in Love"---first song I sang to Preston--he was 5 seconds old
17. "I Gave My Love a Cherry"---time of silence when told I need another surgery and another one of Preston's lullabies
18. "Scarborough Fair" (5-6x)---pulmonary capacity tests
19. "Pachelbel Canon in D" (however long)---being wheeled into surgery and awaiting unconciousness
20. "有隻雀仔跌落水“－”Has a Bird Fallen in the Water" (1x in Cantonese) to the tune of "London Bridge" ---Silence for being told another lupus complication like alopecia as occured
Most of these are light-hearted and cheerful tunes with no significance in the text. Some have no text. Considering the circumstances in which I am humming them is a logical approach. I can offer no rhyme or reason for these tunes--combusting spontaniety. MUSIC has penetrated to the core of me. Often when a friend is tellling me something my brain has a ready song to reply. This mechanism is magical. It is self-hipnosis, self-redirection, and coping with pain without being destroyed in the process.
Not all the songs are springy and I assure you there will be more selections. There is an unfathomable depth of sorrow when pain is a constant companion. So deep in the physique and plunged in the essence of a being. Intractable pain, unrelenting pain, interminable pain, punctuating pain, excruciating machete pain, straining pain, deranging pain, maniacal pain, dull but bony pain, pulsating lymph node pain, pyrexic pain/chill, clutching pain, burning pain, moving pain, freezing pain, hovering pain (hands), nauceous pain, writhing pain, articular pain, soft-tissue on fire, revetting eye pain, crapulous pain, wretching abdomenal pain, vascular headache pain, mysterious refered pain, trancient spastic pain, itsy-bitsy toe pain, post-surgical pain, wanting-to-die-now pain and their constancy and companionshp can test and sober one's mustard. I wish I were the crying type. So I "Klingon" every hope that "This All Shall Pass" will ring and sing true for me, soon, someday, before I expire, and expire I with it.
MUSIC has this cherubimish yet virginal capacity to help me cope. MUSIC is the balm. The worse the pain the sillier the songs I hum.
Now, always have a song in your heart!
My cream-colored Yamaha antique wind-up metronome from Hong Kong sitting prominently on my very FINE grand piano. My parents and husband's gift to me when I turned 30!!!
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