Heba’s story

During a long stay in hospital, singing and songwriting helped Heba’s confidence to grow

Heba spent nine months in hospital following a brain tumour. During this time, treatment was intense. She spent a lot of time on her own and missed her family and friends. Her discharge date was postponed several times, leaving Heba and her family uncertain about when she could leave the hospital.

When Heba began music therapy, she’d recently undergone a tracheostomy (where a tube was inserted into her airpipe under her chin). At that time, she wasn’t speaking, and she didn’t want to engage or communicate with others.

Before her hospitalisation, Heba used to enjoy singing. When she first started music therapy with Brigitte, it would take a while until she responded or engaged with the music. However, this all changed when they began to write a song together.

Heba began to play the keyboard during her sessions, which was laid across her bed. She would improvise short phrases and memorise them from week to week. To this tune, her and Brigitte wrote a song that began ‘One sunny day, I met a cat…’. The song told the story of a lost cat called Iza who couldn’t find her way home. Iza heard the sound of a ship, which reminded her of her best friend Emma, and therefore the way back home.

Heba tentatively began to try to vocalise to the song she had written, singing one breath per sound into a microphone. Two people from the hospital’s play team provided her with support and encouragement throughout, showing genuine interest in her song.

One day, Heba performed her song from her hospital bed to a group of doctors, nurses and other professionals. She received a huge round of applause, and Heba’s mother wiped a tear from her eye. Heba, who had been hiding behind her handwritten lyric sheet, began to smile.

Heba was a singer again, just as she had been before her illness started

After the performance, Heba’s confidence grew immensely, and she became more sociable and talkative. She wanted to keep singing in the music therapy sessions that followed. And importantly, Heba realised and accepted that she could still sing and be a singer, just as she had been before her hospitalisation.