From HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) – No, this is not your average guitar or piano lesson. This is a chance for one cancer-fighting youngster to show her music therapist something new and different. “The thought of the hurt and the pain away from your kid and give them something else to focus on while they are here? It helps a lot,” Tina Parkerson said. She is the mother of Montana Worley who was diagnosed with a form of leukemia when she was just 2 months shy of her 13th birthday. “She was just tired and gave out of breath easy and was having hip pain. And we had taken her to the doctor and they put it off to growing pains and a virus and gave her a z-pac just in case it was a negative flu test,” Parkerson said. She says during a later visit to the ER, a doctor looked at Montana’s blood cells under a microscope and made the diagnosis.
Young Montana is now a patient at St. Judes and often comes to the satellite office at Huntsville Hospital. That’s where she met Krysee Wright who is a bright, vivacious certified music therapist who seems to strike right note to help children. “We have a wide range of children here. So, we have children from infants all the way to teenagers. Everyone has a different music style and a different music that they love. But they also respond to it in different ways,” Wright said.
While there’s no doubt that these little ones are having so much fun with music, music therapy can also be used as a diversionary tactic. “When they are very small it may be that they respond to it as a distraction, so they’re getting their ports accessed or they’re getting an IV or they’re getting a shot. As humans in our teenage years, that is when we form a lot of emotional bonds to music. We sort of find our identity with music. So as we see here, our intervention is expressive. We write songs. We learn to play instruments. It’s something that they can take home too and be able to write their own songs,” Wright said. Wright says she wants them to have something to support themselves in life not just in a clinic; A love for music so comforting, they can make their own. (Written by Bobby Shuttleworth)
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WSFA.com Montgomery Alabama news.
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Posted by William David