Three years ago today, I read an article in the newspaper that singing for an hour daily is ideal for improving one's lung capacity and increasing the oxygenation level in one's blood better than walking ten miles a day. I was instantly interested.
At the age of 11 years, I was run over by a wagon which left me with several life-threatening injuries including a damaged spine: a collapsed chest with all except two ribs broken: a punctured lung: both legs broken in many places. I needed over fifty operations on my legs over a two year period and was told that my osteoarthritis would worsen as I got older until it severely disabled me. I retired prematurely at the age of 53 years as I was finding it increasingly difficult to walk or stand for lengthy periods. An inability to exercise enough, coupled with having smoked cigarettes for fifty years left my breathing capacity at COPD level.
In 2002. I had two serious heart attacks in the space of one week. The second was a massive heart attack and it left me unconscious for four days as my family stood around my hospital bed, having being told that I would die. They tried to put a stent in but it just collapsed and I was left to the mercy of the Gods. I recovered to learn that I would be functioning on three of my major heart arteries instead of four for the rest of my life. The arteries are the blood vessels that deliver oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the tissues of the body.
In the spring of 2013, I developed terminal blood cancer which had three major implications for me. It was a type of blood cancer that would eventually give me new cancers for the remainder of my life in my body organs. I currently have three different body cancers. Blood cancer robbed me of an effective immune system which means I play Russian Roulette each day I shake hands with another, breathe the same air, or I am in crowds. Your cold gives me instant pneumonia and your bug confines me to my bed. This has meant that the worse conditions the vulnerable in the country have experienced this past year, I have experienced since 2013, and will experience until the day I die. My blood cancer severely depletes the oxygen levels in my blood. My life span with the condition in 2013 was three years.
The previous three paragraphs identify me as being the most suitable type of person to test out the 'singing theory' I read about three years ago today. I decided to have singing practice daily and I started out with one hour a day and now do at least two hours daily. I put a song up on my Facebook page daily.
My daily singing practice witnessed a remarkable improvement in lung capacity improvement and the increase of oxygen in my blood
within six months from 80 percent to 97 percent (95 percent is the normal reading for a healthy person). I take my readings four times a day and they have rarely changed significantly in all that time, including the periods I have had eight cancer operations (including three life-saving ones). Please urge anyone with breathing problems to engage in singing practice. It matters not how they sound, merely that they practice using their vocal cords.
I end today with a bit of light humour. The video I show below is not 'staged' as I genuinely did not know that my naughty daughter Becky was taking it on her mobile at the time.
SITUATION: It is three years to the day. My daughter is spending a few days with us. Half an hour earlier I had read the newspaper article in question. I had decided to have a go at this singing practice and I asked my wife, Sheila, to play my mother's favourite song on the piano, 'The Isle of Innisfree'. Sheila plays the organ at church and plays sheet music, and she knows the hymns she is playing. Being entirely unfamiliar with my mother's song I wanted to sing, and because we had no sheet music to guide her, not surprisingly Sheila went off-key a number of times. I was initially annoyed with her and I asked ALEXA to play a musical background to the song and I diplomatically suggested that Sheila play along on the piano. A few minutes later I sack 'Sheila' and I sing on as she sits out the rest of my shaky performance. I struggle on despite my daughter laughing at the way I dismissed Sheila, and because I am standing with my back to her as she is still giggling. Then, the Forde pantomime finishes on a high with the entrance of the postman ringing the doorbell, at which stage I burst out laughing.
Have a laugh on Bill, and if you want to see the difference that six months' singing practice makes, compare my later performance of the same song below when you get time.
Love and peace
Bill xxx