Mass. General resident finds music strikes a healing chord

Dr. Raffi Tachdjian, a 34-year-old pediatric resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, doesn't wear a lab coat, doesn't drape a stethoscope around his neck, and doesn't carry a stack of medical charts on a clipboard. He carries his guitar instead.

Last summer, inspired by a 16-year-old guitar-playing patient who died from a rare kind of bone cancer, Raffi, as he is known to colleagues and patients, produced a CD of his own music and began selling it to the public through local music stores.

With the proceeds, he bought musical instruments (mostly guitars and keyboards) for more than 20 chronically ill patients or "kiddos" as he calls them. He released a second CD last month, a collection of music that runs the gamut from opera to Afro-funk, and he is hoping to be able to buy instruments for every "kiddo" who passes through the hospital's doors.

"With music," Tachdjian said striding through the pediatric floor last week, guitar in hand, "you open up a channel with them."

Tachdjian is already talking about the release of a third CD, which he hopes will bring in enough money to start moving the program nationwide.

"We've grown fairly quickly and I just want to keep it going," Tachdjian said, his earnestness breaking into a smile. "I shoot low, but I aim high."

He tells the story of a 7-year-old chemotherapy patient who was so sick of being pricked and prodded week after week that, one day, he started yelling at his nurse and refused to stop.

The nurse paged Tachdjian, who came into the room, propped his guitar up on the bed, and said, "I know you don't want me to be here, but why don't you try this."

With his fingers striking a chord, Tachdjian gestured for the patient to strum the strings. "When an actual chord sounded he was totally surprised, and he strummed the strings again a second time with the same reaction."

The third time, he put his hand over all the strings, muffling the sound. "The guitar went `ppprrrhhhh" and I said `did you fart?' and he just blew up laughing."

He grew up in Los Angeles, the son of a pediatrician, and Tachdjian describes himself as the kind of child who had to be chased down to be given a shot. He uses the memory to connect with his patients, who often feel as anxious as they do sick.

"When I give a patient an instrument, they're not just getting a guitar," he said. "They're getting an object of permanence, a friend that can make noise and that speaks a language of its own. They take it home with them, hear it there, and then when they come back to the hospital they have the sounds of home and something to comfort them if their parents aren't around."

Last week, Tachdjian presented a ukulele to 3-year-old Adam McGugin, a Pennsylvania native who was at the hospital for his first chemotherapy treatment.

After performing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," on his own guitar, accompanied by Adam and his parents (hand movements included), Tachdjian unveiled the ukulele, and set it in McGugin's lap.

"It's just a wittle bit big," said 3-year-old, dwarfed by the instrument.

"That's because I'm counting on you getting bigger," Tachdjian said.

After a meeting with representatives from the Berkeley College of Music, who are helping to bring music therapy to the pediatric patients at the hospital, Tachdjian inventoried the number of instruments in the Nick Ressler Musical Library, located in the playroom where he often "jams" with the older patients at night.

He stood chatting with Pam Ressler, a volunteer whose involvement in the music therapy program was spurred by the death of her son, Nick, in 2001.

"We're all such huge fans of Raffi's," she said. "The Children's Music Fund would never have happened without him and I know firsthand through Nick how music can make someone healthy, maybe not healthy to where one gets better, but truly healthy. That's what Raffi is doing -- helping kids get healthy and keeping them happy."

Dr. Raffi Tachdjian

Age: 34

Home: Boston

Education: Studied physiology at the University of California at Los Angeles; received his medical degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham; residency at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Biggest knowledge gap: Never heard of the children's troubadour "Raffi," famous for songs like "Baby Beluga" and "Apples and Bananas."

Website that sells his CD: www.reflectronic.com