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The Singer – By Artur Koka-Puziarski
She developed a pulmonary infection that led to respiratory arrest while abroad. She spent about eight weeks on a ventilator with a tracheotomy tube in place on steroids and morphine. She was a young and promising jazz singer and composer, had a PhD in philosophy, as well as her own radio show when it happened.
I met her just after she had moved out of the Intensive Care Unit. She had lost a lot of weight and a lot of hair, laying flat on her back with a constant tremor due to drug withdrawal. She had also lost all of her faith in life and in the people treating her. Her specialist told her she would never sing again because of fibrotic changes that developed in her lungs.
All she could do then was whisper. She could not even lift her arm.
She first asked me to leave stating that physiotherapists had not helped her thus far. Somehow I managed to convince her to give me a chance and so we started treatment. Within a week she could sit on her own, within two she could stand, then eventually walk with a walker, then without a walker, then ride a stationary bike until she was eventually discharged from the hospital. Every milestone of her progress was celebrated with tears of joy and disbelief, joined by her husband and sister.
A year later she invited me to her first concert after returning to stage at the "Top of the Senator". She reserved the table next to the stage for me and officially opened her concert dedicating it to me. Since then every time I tell her story I have tears in my eyes and my voice cracks. It has been 15 years– but this woman and her story continue to touch my heart.
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