Piano.

Today I had a mission. To find a playable piano somewhere at Sloan Kettering- which is a lot harder than it should be. I was asking all different staff members throughout the hospital whether there was truly a piano in the hospital since I had heard rumors that there was. Well, my expedition eventually led me to the 15th floor at Memorial Sloan- Kettering. The hospital has a very famous amenity for its cancer patients- a beautiful club just for them where no doctors are allowed. They have art tables for ceramics and painting and three pianos dispersed among the very spacious area. They had fish tanks and gorgeous views overlooking the upper east side. It is a very peaceful place and they try and make the space as safe for the patients as possible and it gives them a place to escape from the never-ending reminder of the terrible disease that they have. I walked through the door and immediately saw a beautiful grand piano. In order to understand this story, one must understand that music is a very important of my life. I would always play the piano in order to de-stress from the craziness of my life. The past three weeks I have had a lot of stressors between the program and other life stressors and I have not had any piano to play (During the school year I play the piano almost every day in order to keep my stress in check). So back to the story: I entered the patient area and I had my badge around my neck and I went up to supervisor of the area and asked the policy of playing the piano. She looked at my badge and apologized and said staff were not allowed in the area and that I would not be able to play the piano. At that point I was really depressed because I have been looking for a piano for about two weeks now and I finally found one that is close and gorgeous and I really had a lot of emotions that I needed to express through music. The woman could visually see that I was flustered and I just told her kind of the situation and how I was a student and I really needed to play. She thought for a moment and said take your badge off. I took it off and put it into my pocket and she said go for it. I played for a straight hour and it was so amazing. It was therapy for me. What really was amazing about the entire situation was that I got to play for an hour and this was an emotional release for me. While I played though I would say about thirty cancer patients came in and out with all of their IVs attached and they all sat and listened. It was so cool that something that was a therapy for me had an impact on others who listened and in some way was a therapy for them. It was really an amazing moment. I watched as the patients closed their eyes and listened to the music and they seemed to be so much at peace and I was at peace and it was great.