Hitting Just the Right Note

Music plays an essential role in the life of 32-year-old John Morgan Roe, and his career as an orchestra teacher is central to his identity. So, when he had a stroke at 28, returning to teaching was an important goal for recovery.

John Morgan lives in Florence, South Carolina, with his wife, Christy, who is also a musician. Before his stroke, in addition to teaching middle and high school orchestra, John Morgan performed as a violinist with Florence’s community symphony and at events and weddings. Christy teaches piano and is the collaborative pianist with the choir at another local high school.

Caused by an arteriovenous malformation (an irregular tangle of blood vessels), the stroke affected his left side, impacting his ability to walk and his strength and fine motor skills in his left arm and hand. He spent several days in the ICU in Florence and then transferred to a local inpatient rehabilitation center. There, he says, he made a lot of progress, especially with his lower body.

“I went from being completely immobilized to being able to walk with a cane,” he remembers.

While trying to decide where John Morgan should continue his rehabilitation, his wife and dad learned about Shepherd Pathways, Shepherd Center’s comprehensive outpatient brain injury rehabilitation program. When he got to Pathways, John Morgan was impressed by his therapists.

“I had a very good experience at Pathways. All the therapists I worked with were really good, very kind, very compassionate. They were very good at connecting with the patients.”

He and his therapists got right to work with physical, occupational, speech, music, mental health, and recreational therapy.

John Morgan worked on balance, so he could walk without a cane or ankle-foot orthosis (AFO). He used a driving simulator to prepare to drive with an adaptive steering wheel spinner knob. He played games focused on pattern recognition to sharpen his cognitive skills.

“Recreational therapy, that was unexpected and fun. I got to play games. But it was still therapy, so that was fun.”

He appreciated his care team’s approach.

“I liked that they kind of took a holistic approach and found ways to make [therapy] personally meaningful and rewarding. I think that was more of an emphasis at Shepherd Center, and they had more resources that made that possible.”

One such therapy session included a trip to a nearby hiking trail with Christy and his physical therapist.

“My physical therapist was there the whole time, guiding me through it, making sure I was safe. But it was really cool because one of the things that Christy and I really enjoyed before my stroke was hiking and going to parks and things. And it was really, really cool that they were able to incorporate that into my therapy.”

Music therapy with board-certified music therapist Thomas Miller, MS.Ed, LPMT, MT-BC, was, of course, also a highlight. Even his office made a lasting impression on John Morgan.

“I remember just the way he had his office set up; he had a lot of memorabilia and pictures from a whole bunch of different artists and a whole bunch of different genres and things. So no matter where you're coming from with your musical preferences, there's something in there that you could connect to,” John Morgan explains. “And that inspired me to decorate my classroom the same way. I'm not as comprehensive as Thomas is, but I’ve tried to have artists from a variety of genres or memorabilia from a variety of genres [in my classroom] that students can connect to.”

And since he had his eye on returning to work, John Morgan’s therapists challenged him to create a lesson plan and teach it to other patients. He developed a concept, prepared slides, and taught the lesson.

“That was a very rewarding experience because it went really well. It was a pretty successful lesson and at the end, I remember having a feeling that I can still teach, even though all this has happened to me, I can still go back and be good at something. So that was very rewarding.”

Planning for a Return to Work

Vocational rehabilitation counselor Zac Bradley, MS, CRC, NCC, CVE, helped John Morgan plan his return to the classroom.

“Zac was and is just amazing. He was really good at his job,” says John Morgan. “I knew I wanted to go back to work, but I had not even thought about what that process would look like. He did a really good job of explaining, ‘Here's what needs to happen,’ and breaking it down, giving me the tools that I needed to think through to make sure that I was ready.

“Just having him there to walk me through the process was really helpful. And Christy was in most of the sessions with me. And so she would be taking notes and asking questions. And sometimes she would have questions about things that I hadn't thought of.”

Bradley sustained a spinal cord injury 15 years ago, during his first year of college.

“It was also just really encouraging for me to see someone who had gone through an injury and returned to work. And now he was the person coaching me on how to go back to work after my stroke,” John Morgan recalls. “That was a very meaningful and powerful part of working with Zac was knowing that he had already gone through some version of this process and had come out the other side as a successful person in his field. So that had a big impact on me.”

John Morgan graduated from Shepherd Pathways in July and returned to the classroom full-time in August. He continued physical and occupational therapy close to home and still participates in occupational therapy to improve strength and dexterity in his left hand. Getting back to work helped him maintain his music-related skills — and returning to the classroom has been meaningful.

“It has been a very rewarding part of my life.”

While getting back to teaching has been fulfilling for John Morgan, his stroke also helped see his work in a different light. He says now, he views his health as his biggest priority. In hindsight, he says he wishes he had worked only part-time at first and devoted more time to his rehab during the first year following his stroke.

“I saw a lot of my identity in my work. And I thought the way to move forward and recover was not necessarily for me to get better physically, but for me to just prove that I could go back to work and do what I used to do before the stroke. And I've kind of shifted to I now think that my health is more important to me than work. And I'm trying to make time for my physical health, my rehab, because I think that's going to be more meaningful for me in the long run.”

Written by Ruth Underwood