Kevin's story
Kevin Braxton couldn’t speak. Then, he sang.
The 42-year-old, who couldn’t climb out of his bed at Penn State Health Rehabilitation Hospital without help, one day found himself caroling about “dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh.”
After a severe hemorrhagic stroke, Kevin was practically catatonic. “Lifeless,” said girlfriend, Megan Kellam.
He would stammer a few words with great effort. The caring father and interior designer Megan had fallen in love with was seemingly was gone.
Now, here he was, singing.
The lyrics to “Jingle Bells” were all there, stored in a memory bank and needing a jaunty beat and some sleigh bells to be pushed out.
The technique, which his speech-language pathologist calls Melodic Intonation Therapy, uses music to help patients learn to communicate verbally. It was one tool in a mammoth toolbox the physician-led team of nurses and therapists at Penn State Health Rehabilitation Hospital utilized to help Kevin find himself.
Weeks earlier, Megan had picked up Kevin’s twin sons, Kaison and Karson, from school and stopped for ice cream when Kevin called.
“Babe, I fell,” he said.
“Fell how?” she asked.
What followed was slurred gibberish. She rushed home and found him lying face down next to one of the boys’ gaming chairs. Megan, who works in health care, immediately noticed the stroke.
“You never expect it to kick in,” she said of her health-care instincts. “I do what’s best for my patient. But it’s hard when it’s a loved one.”
Kaison and Karson sat nearby, asking quietly if their dad was OK. Megan reassured them as an ambulance arrived. Two of three kids in the family (Kevin, their older brother, was away at college), Kaison and Karson are close. That closeness extends to their father.
“They have a special bond,” Megan said.
Next came 23 days at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, two weeks of which Kevin spent in an intensive care unit before being downgraded. He lay in his hospital bed expressionless, hooked to a feeding tube in his stomach. Megan communicated with him through yes and no questions. A new fear kicked in. She worried about Kevin’s future quality of life.
Megan had colleagues who worked at Penn State Health Rehabilitation Hospital. She read about what they offered and was drawn to patient success stories. She opted to send him there.
The experts impressed her from the start. “They worked him,” she said. Within moments of Kevin’s arrival, his physical therapist helped him sit and stand on his own, focusing on reviving areas where his strength had diminished. Within days, he was spending time in the gym, using specialized equipment, like an exercise bike that stimulated his neuromuscular strength with a mild electrical charge. He moved to walking, starting with a few steps using a walker and slowly increasing his distance.
Sometimes, Kevin would stand between parallel bars in the gym, hesitant to take his first steps. Once he began, the strides came quickly, Megan said. Like speaking, the stroke erected a wall in his brain that Kevin had to topple to walk again.
Therapy sessions improved the more Kevin’s family was involved. When Kaison and Karson visited, the mood always lifted, Megan said.
Slowly, the old Kevin climbed back. His occupational therapists helped with other limitations hindering his everyday living. They used electrostimulation on his arms and asked him to perform simple tasks like getting dressed. When he couldn’t reach an item of clothing, they gave him strategies and equipment – bands to pull up his socks and reachers to pick up shirts beyond his fingertips.
The speech therapy continued to pay dividends, dashing beyond “Jingle Bells.” The team asked about his favorite songs (born in New York, Kevin had an affinity for the Alicia Keys’ track “Concrete State of Mind”). After singing with the recording, the volume was gradually lowered. Increasingly, Kevin sang the words and phrases on his own without accompaniment.
When he was first learning to speak and music couldn’t coax a word, Kevin surprised his therapist by pushing and stammering out two names. As he began to form words again, they were all Kevin could say – and for a while he’d prefaced everything he learned with two words sweeter to him than any tune.
“Kaison and Karson,” he’d say.
His speech pathologist also recommended a modified barium swallow study to see video images of Kevin swallowing. That ultimately led to his being able to feed himself again without a tube.
At the end of seven weeks, Kevin was ready to return home. After being nearly unresponsive in his hospital bed, Kevin could walk, eat and talk. He’s continuing to receive in-home therapy and now can climb up and down stairs.
The barrier between Kevin and the words he wants to use is dissolving. Thoughts are arriving at his lips easier. Sometimes, Kevin surprises Megan with a new sentence. For example, Megan left to bring the twins home from school one day, just like she had the day she found him and all their troubles began.
He strung together a simple question, but one he hadn’t gotten out in months: “Are you going to pick up the kids?” he asked.
These days, words no longer require music or tools from a therapist’s box.
The important ones never leave.