Percussionist’s Plight

Thank you for Barbara Isenberg’s wonderfully informative and well-written article, “Interest in Arts Medicine Swelling to Crescendo,” in the Jan. 4 View Section.

I am thrilled with the entire arts-medicine concept for a variety of reasons. Most important, I am married to a musician who has suffered work-related health problems and we have found physicians to be incredibly insensitive to his life style and specific circumstances.

My husband is a percussionist and like the musicians you wrote about he recently suffered from tendinitis. However, unlike the performers in your article, he was told by a most unsympathetic doctor that he’d just have to stop the wrist action which was causing the pain. The doctor clearly had no idea of what it means to live the life of a professional musician.

Your article also alluded to the fact that performers not only have special physical problems and needs but that they have psychological ones as well. I would suggest that this is most definitely true. Most performers I know have a unique world view and, therefore, require special consideration if health care is to be what it should be--a true healing process.

This brings me to another aspect of your article, but one that Isenberg did not mention--the need for the health-care profession to be more creative and flexible in the treatment of people. It has become a question of economics. Hospitals and other health-care providers need to attract more people into the system and this is a great marketing concept. An untapped, for the most part, target group or market segment is now being recognized and courted.

ROBYN L. CLASS

Costa Mesa