Chicago pianist ‘grateful' to make music again after life-changing brain surgery

Chicago Tribune

6 days ago

A hospital bed in Florida isn't Mark Burnell's typical performance venue. But this spring, with an electric keyboard in his lap and 14 holes drilled into his skull, the longtime Chicago musician struck up a melody on the old ivories.
The tune was a time-honored, and fitting, classic from 'The Wizard of Oz': the Scarecrow's seminal hit, 'If I Only Had a Brain.'
Standing bedside, Burnell's wife, Anne, sang along. 'I would not be just a nothin' my head all full of stuffin', my heart all full of pain,' she crooned. 'And perhaps I'll deserve you, and be even worthy of you, if I only had a brain.'
Burnell, a pianist and singer who has gigged, directed and taught across Chicago since 1989, underwent brain surgery in April at a Mayo Clinic campus in Florida, after a year and a half spent managing monthly seizures. The procedure used innovative brain mapping techniques and even mid-surgery performances by Burnell himself to see through.
But ultimately, the treatment proved successful at tempering Burnell's epilepsy, he and his surgical team say. Now, a few months into recovery, the Burnells on Thursday night will be staging their first large public concert since Burnell's surgery.
Headed into the concert at the Gateway Lounge in Chicago's Copernicus Center in Jefferson Park, Burnell says he's eager to perform, especially with the newfound freedom that surgery has given him.
'I'm on the road to healing,' Burnell said, sitting down for an interview Monday alongside Anne at their Wicker Park home. 'I feel excited about playing music again, not afraid of seizing on the stage.'
'Play this keyboard but don't play anything easy, challenge yourself!'
Burnell's case was a complex one, said Dr. William Tatum, an epileptologist with the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Florida who was part of Burnell's surgical team. It was also a long time coming. What brought the musician to Mayo Clinic was a head trauma dating back to the 1970s, an injury that left Burnell epileptic.
By the time he came to Mayo Clinic, not only was Burnell drug-resistant to anti-seizure medication, but his seizures also derived from several areas of the brain, making treatment more challenging, Tatum said.
The surgical team began with a technique called stereoelectroencephalography, or stereo EEG. The procedure involves placing electrodes deep into a patient's brain through small holes drilled in the skull, said Dr. David Sabsevitz, a clinical neuropsychologist with Mayo Clinic, also part of Burnell's surgical team.
With stereo EEG, electrodes 'listen to brain activity,' which allows doctors to localize where exactly a patient's seizures are coming from, Sabsevitz said. In Burnell's case, stereo EEG provided his surgical team with the data they needed to figure out where to direct treatment. That was just the first step.
Using the same electrodes they placed in Burnell for stereo EEG, the surgical team electrically stimulated his brain to determine where they could surgically intervene and where they couldn't, Sabsevitz said. That meant probing the areas of Burnell's brain deemed the source of his seizures and assessing — through stimulation — whether intervention would impact Burnell's abilities or functionality in any way.
In real time, that entailed Burnell going through a series of tests, all while he was wide awake.
For instance, the surgical team had Burnell repeat words or name famous faces while they stimulated different areas of his brain. If they saw any disruption, they knew to avoid or at least be extra careful with any intervention going forward.
They also had Burnell play the piano. For about half the treatment, Burnell played different songs on a toy keyboard that he bought ahead of his surgery. (It was the only keyboard that would fit in his luggage, Burnell said.) 'If I Only Had a Brain' was one of a slate of tunes Burnell and Anne brought to Mayo Clinic. And if the electrodes weren't obstacle enough, their hospital setlist wasn't simple either.
'(The doctors) said, 'Play this keyboard but don't play anything easy, challenge yourself,'' Burnell said.
By having Burnell play piano, his surgical team could view how different aspects of musical processing were organized in his brain as to avoid damaging or disrupting those systems, Sabsevitz said. The surgical team mapped Burnell's cognitive functions using a tool that Sabsevitz developed called NeuroMapper, a tablet-based testing platform.
Burnell didn't feel any pain inside his brain through the procedure, but that didn't make it any less scary, he said. The only reason he was willing to go through with the treatment was because he was out of options, he said.
Once Burnell's surgical team had adequately mapped his brain, they turned to one last step: eradicating the root of his seizures. Through a process called radiofrequency ablation, Burnell's team heated the electrodes in his brain to ablate and destroy small portions of his brain tissue causing him to seize. Burnell stayed awake for the ablation too. He also reprised his repertoire on his travel keyboard, with Anne accompanying him, as another active test of the treatment's effect on his livelihood.
Since April, Burnell has had a few seizures, but not nearly as many as before, he said. Though not necessarily free of seizures, Burnell's treatment signified 'the best possible outcome that we could have,' Tatum said.
'It's really awesome and so satisfying, as an epilepsy doctor, so to see somebody as complex as Mark undergo the entire deal of everything that can be done and yet have a good outcome. … He's one that we will always remember,' Tatum said.
To Sabsevitz, Burnell's case highlighted the need to think outside the box, he said. Radiofrequency ablation, especially, is a relatively new and rare procedure in the United States. The procedure has been in use at Mayo Clinic for only about a year. Last summer, a young woman from Georgia became the first pediatric patient in the U.S. to undergo similar treatment, Fox News reported in April. She was also treated at Mayo Clinic Florida.
For Burnell, his musicality made his case all the more unique, Sabsevitz said.
'Not only did we map him playing his piano and singing with his wife … we were creating lesions in real time and watching to see what it did to his brain and these functions,' Sabsevitz said.
An old friend with connections to Mayo Clinic
Burnell, 69, a Pennsylvania native, has played the piano since age 8. He received a bachelor's and master's of fine arts from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh before moving to Chicago 36 years ago.
He and Anne first crossed paths in 1993. The duo met performing in different bands on one of those cocktail/dinner cruise ships that park at Navy Pier. She sang. He played the piano. They had their first date that night.
'The first thing I heard (Anne) sing was 'A Sunday Kind of Love,'' Burnell recalled. 'That ended up being our first dance (at our wedding).'
The pair not only married, but have made music together and continue to perform, both as a duo and individually. They consider themselves crossover artists, delving into jazz, Broadway, pop and gospel, the Burnells say. To date, they have released several albums together.
'The two loves of my life are music and (Anne),' Burnell said.
When Burnell had a seizure for the first time, Anne didn't know he had previously suffered from a traumatic brain injury.
In 1974, Burnell took a bad fall while a freshman at Carnegie Mellon. He recalled falling backward into grass, where his head landed on a manhole cover. The fall put Burnell into a coma for a week. He recovered, missing only a couple of weeks of school. As the years went on, Burnell began to forget about the injury until 23 years ago when a seizure sent him to the hospital, he said.
While the seizure only had Burnell out of commission for a couple days, he was prescribed anti-seizure medication and went back to performing. Then, four years later, Anne came home to Burnell collapsed on the floor. He again returned to the hospital, where he was placed in a medically induced coma for 11 days to stop him from seizing.
Afterward, the seizures again seemed to dissipate. Years passed with no relapse, until a couple years ago, when Burnell began having moments where he would 'check out' for a few seconds, whether that meant he'd stop talking or couldn't remember what he was playing on the piano.
For a year and a half, Burnell was having seven to eight seizures a month. In January, that doubled.
Concerned, Burnell and Anne confided in a friend they used to perform with in Chicago. To their surprise, that friend turned to the Burnells and replied, 'I got a guy.' It turned out that their friend had a connection to the Mayo Clinic, which offers the highest level of epilepsy diagnosis and care, as rated by the National Association of Epilepsy Centers.
One referral later, Burnell was at the health system's Florida campus by February. He spent days getting tested as doctors charted a path forward. By April, he was due for surgery.
When Burnell got home from Mayo Clinic, he beelined for his piano. 'We got off the plane and the first thing I wanted to know was do I remember the songs?' he said. He was pleasantly surprised to find most of the music he had committed to memory remained at his fingertips.
Thursday's performance at the Copernicus Center will be an homage to 'Baby Boomer Songwriters.' Think James Taylor, Paul Simon, Carole King — but with a jazzed-up flair.
Asked how they were feeling just a few days out from the concert, Burnell smiled. 'We've done a lot of homework,' Anne said.
'Yeah, we've practiced,' Burnell added. 'We feel like we're ready.'
Above all, Burnell says he just feels 'so grateful' that he can make music again.
'I've never done any other kind of work,' he said. 'If that would have been taken away from me, it would have been like taking my life away from me. But here, now I have music, and I have Anne.'
The Burnells' show at the Copernicus Center is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, with doors opening at 6:30. Tickets are available at http://bit.ly/45iAwVl.