'Singing songs by The Beatles helped me

recover from a stroke': Man used Fab Four's hit

tracks to regain his speech

Peter Trollope suffered a stroke which left him unable

to speak coherently.

By Peter Trollope Daily Mail Australia.

Published: 10:01 EST, 5 January 2016

The ability to talk is not something most of us give a second

thought— it had certainly never occurred to me how bereft

I’d feel without my voice. Then one day I woke up in a

hospital bed robbed of the power to utter a single word.

I’d had a stroke. It came without warning and wreaked havoc

on my well-being and ability to communicate.

It happened as I was preparing for a picnic in June last year. I

was with my youngest daughter, Isabella, 12, putting up the

garden umbrella - I suddenly felt strange, dizzy and light-

headed. At the same time I felt something ‘click’ inside my

head. I didn’t lose consciousness, my face didn’t droop but it

felt like the worst migraine ever, with flashing lights and

double vision.

I tried to speak but all the words were jumbled. My partner,

Barbara, realised I was having a stroke and drove me to

hospital.

At that point, I was still walking and talking. The stroke,

which was caused by a blood clot in the brain, was yet to

have its full impact.

I remained at the hospital in Wythenshawe, for three hours

while I was scanned and tested. Eventually, I was

transferred by ambulance to a special stroke centre 15 miles

away for clot-busting treatment. All the while my speech

was fading.

I stayed in the centre overnight while doctors checked that

the treatment had worked and that they had stopped the

stroke before it could do any more damage. When I woke, I

realised with increasing panic that I couldn’t speak. I could

only gesture.

Another scan showed the stroke had occurred on the left

side of my brain — the side that controls speech. I was

taken back to the Hospital. It has a stroke rehabilitation unit

that offers intensive therapy whatever your needs — physio,

occupational or, in my case, speech and language therapy.

I would need to learn to speak again. My problem is known

formally as aphasia — the inability to produce speech as the

result of brain damage. 

There are 400,000 people with aphasia in the UK, many of

them because of a stroke. I suffer from expressive aphasia,

which means I know what I want to say, but have trouble

getting the words out or even writing what I mean.

I have worked as a journalist and documentary film-maker

for 40 years - communication is key to everything I do. As I

lay in my hospital bed, I could only think that this was it: my

life as I knew it was over.

There was sadness, rage and a stifling sense of loss.

For the first time in my life I felt depressed and retreated

into my own world. The one thing that gave me any pleasure

was music.

Then suddenly I found hope. Four days after my stroke, I was

lying in bed listening to a Beatles track - I found that I could

sing along. To the amusement of the ward, I was singing

aloud “I Should Have Known Better”. There was no effort

needed to get the words out.

But when my headphones came off and the music stopped,

so did my speech — and I was back to drawing pictures and

gesturing to communicate with everyone.

I filmed myself singing using my phone, ready to show to

anyone who thought I was crazy.

When Cat Blakemore, my speech therapist, saw my film, she

suggested that Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) could work

for me. MIT was first used for patients with aphasia in the

U.S. in the late Seventies. It is still not entirely clear how MIT

works.

The idea is to reduce the brain’s dependency on the left side

for speech – this is done by using other brain areas to do the

job instead. With the help of a speech therapist, patients put

their words to familiar music.

The brain is being rewired and eventually this means speech

can be generated from the right side of the brain. Dr

Gottfried Schlaug, a leading researcher on music-based

treatments, has seen the effects of music on brain scans and

is convinced MIT can help.

MIT begins by using simple target phrases such as ‘I am

thirsty’ to the beat of something familiar, like a nursery

rhyme. In my case, we used melodies from the Beatles

songs.

On my left hand, Cat would tap ‘Can I have a cup of tea?’ —

a beat for each word or syllable. Then I would repeat it while

I tapped, but this time singing the words to the tune of a

Beatles song. The left hand is chosen because it is

controlled by the right side of the brain.

My first attempts at rewiring my brain were mundane. It was

a hesitant: ‘I want . . . a cup . . . of . . . tea ’, set to the beat

of “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. After much trying, I was able

to say the words. It was a pivotal moment.

From not being able to talk at all, I repeated the phrase so

much I was in danger of being awash with tea. After two

weeks in hospital, I was sent home only able to say a few

words and phrases.

I had daily visits from Cat and we continued MIT – we also

tried other ways of restoring my speech, including repeating

simple games like filling in missing words.

After four weeks of intensive therapy, I was left to fend for

myself.

As time has passed, I no longer need to sing sentences in my

head as much. But it was nine months or so before I could

have full conversations with my friends and family.

I sometimes have to sing a sentence under my breath as a

practice run before talking to a stranger or when having a

conversation on the phone.

Some days are better than others, but I can hold my own. I

have even given lectures to speech therapists and other

health professionals about getting my voice back.

I cannot say my recovery is all down to the effects of MIT,

but it certainly helped. So John Lennon and Paul McCartney

deserve my thanks. Over the years they have seen me

through some good and bad times — but none so important

as now.