Lying in her bed at Dell Seton Medical Center, 64-year-old Pamela Mansfield sways her feet to the rhythm of George Jones’ “She Thinks I Still Care.” Mansfield is still recovering much of her mobility after a recent neck surgery, but she finds a way to move to the music floating from a record player that was just wheeled into her room.
“Seems to be the worst part is the stiffness in my ankles and the no feeling in the hands,” she says. “But music makes everything better.”
Mansfield was being visited by the ATX-VINyL program, a project dreamed up by Dr. Tyler Jorgensen to bring music to the bedside of patients dealing with difficult diagnoses and treatments. He collaborates with a team of volunteers who wheel the player on a cart to patients’ rooms, along with a selection of records in their favorite genres.
“I think of this record player as a time machine,” he said. “You know, something starts spinning — an old, familiar song on a record player — and now you're back at home, you're out of the hospital, you're with your family, you're with your loved ones.”
The healing power of Thin Lizzy
Mansfield wanted to hear country music: George Jones, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline. That genre reminds her of listening to records with her parents, who helped form her taste in music. Almost as soon as the first record spins, she starts cracking jokes.
“I have great taste in music. Men, on the other hand … ehhh. I think my picker’s broken,” she says.
Others patients ask for jazz, R&B or holiday records. The man who gave Jorgensen the idea for ATX VINyL loved classic rock. That was around three years ago, when Jorgensen, a long-time emergency medicine physician, began a fellowship in palliative care — a specialty aimed at improving quality of life for people with serious conditions, including terminal illnesses. Shortly after he began the fellowship, he struggled to connect with a particular patient.
“There were just all these walls and barriers. I couldn't draw this man out, and I felt like he was really struggling and suffering,” Jorgensen said.
He had the idea to try playing the patient some music. He went with “The Boys Are Back in Town,” by the 1970s rock group Thin Lizzy. Jorgensen saw an immediate change in the patient, who began to open up as the music played.
“He was telling me old stories about his life. He was getting more honest and vulnerable about the health challenges he was facing,” he said. “And it just struck me that all this time I've been practicing medicine, there's such a powerful tool that is almost universal to the human experience, which is music, and I've never tapped into it.”
Creating new memories
Jorgensen realized records could lift the spirits of patients dealing with heavy circumstances in hospital spaces that are often aesthetically bare. And he thought vinyl would offer a more personal touch than streaming a digital track through a phone or speaker.
"There's just something inherently warm about the friction of a record — the pops, the scratches,” he said. “It sort of resonates through the wooden record player, and it just feels different.”
Since then, he has built up a collection of 60 records and counting at the hospital. The most-requested album by a landslide is Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors.” Willie is also popular, along with Etta James and John Denver. And around the holidays, the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” gets a lot of spins.
These days, it’s often a volunteer who rolls the record player from room to room after consulting nursing staff about patients and family members who are struggling and could use a visit. Daniela Vargas, the UT Austin undergraduate who heads up the volunteer cohort, became passionate about music therapy years ago, when she and her sister began playing violin for isolated patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said she sees similar benefits when she curates a collection of records for a patient today.
“We are usually not in the room for the entire time, so it's a more intimate experience for the patient or family, but being able to interact with the patient in the beginning and at the end can be really transformative,” Vargas said.
Often, the palliative care patients visited by ATX-VINyL are near the end of life. Jorgensen feels that the record player provides a physical interruption for the heaviness those patients and their families are experiencing. Suddenly, it’s possible to create a new, positive shared experience at a profoundly difficult time.
“We like to think that's a big part of it, that you're creating a memory,” he said. “‘Hey, remember that time we got to play this for Dad? He loved that so much.’ And I think it gives agency to patients, to families, to loved ones, to actually do something in this difficult situation.”
Other patients, like Pamela Mansfield, are working painstakingly toward recovery. She has had six neck surgeries since this spring and has experienced her share of setbacks. But on the day she listened to the George Jones album, she had a small victory to celebrate: She stood up for three minutes, a record since her most recent surgery.
With the record spinning, she couldn’t help but think about the victories ahead.
“It’s motivating,” she said. “Me and my broom could dance really well to some of this stuff.”
Support for KUT's reporting on health news comes from St. David’s Foundation. Sponsors do not influence KUT's editorial decisions.
