Marlies Muijzers from Eindhoven played the cello for 46 years until she got an illness. “It started with tingling. Within a year I was in a wheelchair.” Playing the cello professionally was over. She couldn’t get on stage anymore. She had to learn to accept her new situation. “You think your world is about to collapse, but it hasn’t.”
The 60-year-old musician is in pain 24 hours a day, especially when she plays the large string instrument. ”My fingers can’t bear the strings anymore. Then I’m going crazy.” How different her life was before the disease. She discovered the cello when she was fourteen. “It was like coming home straight away: wow, this is nice!”
She started working as a social-cultural worker, but after ten years she changed course. Marlies went to the conservatory in Tilburg. “I was in my forties. A mother at the conservatory. That was a good choice. I have been teaching in my own practice in Eindhoven for twenty years now.”
She also often appeared on stage as a professional musician. Playing eight hours a day was no exception. “I was playing the cello seven days a week.” Until disaster struck.
“Looks like you’re burning your hand on something.”
Small fiber neuropathy was the diagnosis. “Your nerves are damaged then. It seems like you are burning your hand on something. It feels like electric shocks. They are stabbing pains. My neurologist said I have the wrong disease in the wrong profession.”
“My thermostat isn’t working properly either. I can be very hot or very cold for hours. It’s a pretty rare disease and then I’m a patient who has it pretty serious. Not every patient ends up in a wheelchair.”
Medicines didn’t help. “It won’t kill me, but they can’t do anything for me anymore.” Marlies did everything she could to accept her new situation. She was trained to drive in a wheelchair. Together with a leather worker, she developed a glove that goes around her fingertips. For example, she can occasionally demonstrate something for a very short time: “Then I have a little less pain when I teach.”
“I have learned that I am not my disease.”
“You can learn to accept. There are techniques for that. I’ve learned to deal with my pain, while it’s always there. I have also learned through therapy that I am not my disease. I’m still the same Marlies. I can give the pain a place.”
Dancing helped her to accept the new life. She looked for a dance coach and danced in her wheelchair to a piece she herself played on the cello. She posted the video on YouTube. “I miss playing terribly, but I can use my creativity in dance. That is delicious. It really is a piece of therapy.”
Marlies turns her setback into something positive. She is developing a workshop where people can discover their resilience. She herself is a living example. “I have a note hanging above the desk here: ‘I see plenty of opportunities’. Dance has helped me a lot with that. Music and dance are means of expression that I wish for everyone who is in bad shape.”
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