When Sunshine Rucker’s primary care doctor recommended they get some tests at Eskenazi Health, they agreed, knowing it had been a couple years. The tests, however, didn’t turn out like they hoped. Rucker remembers feeling shock the day they heard “the c word.”

Shortly after that cancer diagnosis, Rucker learned that Victoria “Tori” Davenport, Eskenazi Health music therapist, could assist them with managing the pain and stress of the condition. Rucker had never heard of music therapy but was willing to try it.

Music therapy, Rucker soon found, was different than just listening to music. “I used music before,” they say, “but not like that.” They discovered this therapy was “an intentional tool to help me with pain, with focus, with concentration.” It got them through the “darkest days of my experience.”

Most people have a relationship with music, explains Davenport, but interacting with a music therapist “shifts your mindset to think about music as intentional or music as health … ” Rucker is an active participant in their sessions and has experienced a wide variety of music therapy interventions, including drumming, music-assisted relaxation and therapeutic singing.

They underwent both chemotherapy and radiation, but cancer was not the only serious health obstacle Rucker has faced. They have also experienced two brain aneurisms and a pulmonary embolism along with other conditions, including neuropathy of the hands and feet. Now an outpatient, Rucker is in therapy through Sandra Eskenazi Mental Health Center to continue coping with life as a cancer survivor. During every stage of their recovery journey, Davenport has been there.

The two connected from the beginning. Rucker says Davenport “didn’t come off like an expert. She came off like a real person. You know, like I could really relate to her.”

Davenport describes Rucker’s experience as a “beautiful journey.” While not all patients are as willing to embrace music therapy as Rucker, when they do, “something just magical can happen,” Davenport says.

For Rucker, music therapy has been transformative. They believe it can be for others too since music “just resonates through your soul, through your spirit, and when we focus on our spirit, we don’t have to be so bogged down with pain and negativity …. ”

“I might not be able to feel my fingertips and my toes and some more things, but guess what? I’m here,” says Rucker. “And I have a resource. I have music therapy. I have therapists. I have people I can talk to and call …. ”

Rucker has been sharing the benefits of this treatment with others because “fear can just make you be incapacitated. But music, boy, you throw on a good song, it’d change everything. It’d change your attitude. It’d change your thoughts. It’d change your ability to say, ‘I have hope.’”

“Music has been very strong in my healing,” they say, adding that this therapy is now a “forever part” of their life. “You know, it’s something I can use over and over and over,” they say. “I can relate it to other things.”

Rucker advises others to learn from their example and take advantage of music therapy offerings because “whatever it is you’re going through, think of a song that back in the day made you kind of bounce and tap your fingers and pat your foot and make some music with it.”

Without this tool, Rucker says they would “not be living a full life. I would be allowing my circumstance to dictate what is going to be my life. I think we have not even scraped the tip of the power of our mind and our soul and our spirit, and music is a way we can cross those lines.” Eskenazi Health Center for Spiritual Care & Education offers music therapy to all patients, families and staff. Board-certified music therapists work with patients to provide supportive and holistic care.