'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
Id feel without my voice. Then one day I woke up in a
hospital bed robbed of the power to utter a single word.
Id 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 didnt lose consciousness, my face didnt 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 couldnt 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 brains 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.