If you happen to walk through the front doors of Barrington’s Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital and think you’re hearing Windows launch music or Universal Studios or Warner Bros. themes played on the piano, don’t hesitate. This is most likely Guido Calcagno, a registered nurse, playing tunes for patients, staff and visitors.

Calcagno is one of the volunteer musicians who play live music for patrons in the Good Shepherd lobby Monday through Saturday.

When volunteer pianist René Mullany plays 88 keys in the lobby, she usually keeps her eyes on the entrance. If she spots a child going to the hospital, she can turn on a Disney song or “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. If a veteran enters, she will play a patriotic song. Her reasoning is that hospitals can be scary and intimidating, and if people recognize a familiar song in the air, maybe that little thing will put them at ease.

“Because we’re in the front, I feel like the pianists are kind of ambassadors for creating a positive tone for Advocate Good Shepherd, and sometimes we can be the face of the hospital,” said Mullany, a Cary resident who has volunteered for her musical talent for four years old. “Let’s face it, when you’re in the hospital, the happiest thing is the kids. Otherwise, you are there to visit someone who is sick, or you are there for a test. … Every time I go to play, at least three or four people pass by, and you can see them snapping their fingers to the beat of the music. People stop by and thank us for our efforts — for being there and bringing a bit of comfort to what might otherwise have been a stressful situation.”

Calcagno, 23, understands. On weekends he plays the small Kawai piano. Piano-trained since the age of 4, the Deerfield resident began working at Good Shepherd in August 2021, and by October he was entertaining passers-by with popular music and compositions he composed. It all started when he heard volunteer pianist Sue Schurr play while walking to the cafeteria. He introduced himself, played some music for Schurr, and she referred him to the hospital’s volunteer services coordinator, Lynette Ig, a clarinetist who auditions for musical volunteers. The rest is history.

“When I play, I can play about eight different songs,” Calcagno said. “I play from a wide variety of music. I have my own compositions… about 10 different pieces that I can play from memory or improvise. I like to think that the music I created really evokes emotions or feelings. In my piano folder, I have music from TV shows, be it Korean dramas, anime, Golden Girls intros, songs from films like Interstellar, Inception, and more modern classical music, pop songs. It also depends on how I feel that day. Music is as therapeutic as it is for my listeners. It helps me relax and reflect and think about what might have happened the day before at work, helps me digest.”

Calcagno, who attends to a wide variety of patients during his 12-hour work day, says he always has time for music and would like to help out with film scores one day.

Eeg said that there are currently 10 volunteer musicians, including a flutist, who play in 90-minute shifts. High school students who have reached the age of 16 can also become volunteers. Interested persons can fill out an application. Magda Scanlan, Good Shepherd’s director of volunteer services, said the office makes sure volunteer roles are aligned with their needs and passions.

Schurr brought a friend from Mullany’s book club into the ranks, and she eventually brought her mother, a piano teacher, to duet with her in the lobby. Schurr, a retired English and drama teacher, laughs as she recalls how she came to play Good Shepherd in 2016.

“My husband had knee surgery and I was getting a little bored so I started walking and checking the hospital and going to the dining area, I was like, ‘Wow! Piano! It’s amazing!” – she said. She sat down and started playing. Schurr asked the staff if she could volunteer, and Eeg said the vacancy had been created.

“We created this position because we now had this beautiful piano that people wanted to play,” said Eeg. She and Schurr agreed that none of this would have happened if the donated piano had been small enough to fit through the conference room door as planned. When the piano did not fit, it settled at the main entrance to the hospital.

“It was a wonderful mistake,” Schurr said. “It was a blessing.”

She plays late morning/early afternoon on Thursdays. She said that playing the piano on Good Shepherd is good for her brain because she tries to learn two new pieces a week. At the request of patients, she learned to play Coldplay and the Ukrainian national anthem. She plays hymns, songs of the season. She even made friends along the way.

“I play Hanukkah and Christmas music. … I try to keep inclusivity in mind,” Schurr said. “You look around and see who’s there and try to play for those people. I listen to Pandora. I listen to the radio and if I like a song I download it and play it. I don’t want to get bored with my own music. I’m definitely trying to spice it up and make people have fun.”

Scanlan said that the live music “feels like you’re entering a really healing space.”

“It’s a beautiful campus, but when you hear music, it just speaks to your other senses,” she said.

drockett@chicagotribune.com

Implanting an oxygen-consuming battery into mice with cancer caused their tumors to shrink or disappear in two weeks when used in conjunction with an experimental class of anti-cancer drugs.

As most tumors grow, they consume oxygen from the non-cancerous tissues surrounding them, so that the tumor cells become anoxic or hypoxic. One class of drugs, called hypoxia-activated prodrugs (HAPs), aims to exploit this feature by killing only those cells that exhibit hypoxia so that healthy cells are less affected, reducing the side effects of the treatment. But no HAPs have been approved for clinical use due to limited evidence for their effectiveness.

Now, Fang Zhang at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and colleagues have developed a self-charging implanted battery that is powered by salt water injected around it, causing the battery to generate very low voltage electricity and consume oxygen. By creating a hypoxic environment, the battery must optimize the action of the HAP.

“The battery can cover the tumor and continuously consume the oxygen it contains for more than 14 days, which is much longer than previous agents. [that worked for] usually no more than two days,” Zhang says.

Zhang and his team implanted the battery in the armpits of 25 mice with breast cancer. Five received a healthy battery and HAP treatment. The rest of the mice were divided into groups in which they either received no treatment or received only HAP preparations, or an implanted battery that did not work, or only a working battery that can last up to 500 hours in mouse tissues.

Fourteen days later, the tumors were reduced by an average of 90% in the five mice that received the working battery and HAP treatment, and in four of these mice they completely disappeared. Tumors remained the same size or grew in other groups of mice.

While the battery hasn’t caused any safety issues when used in mice, the safety bar is higher in humans, so further research is needed to make sure it’s compatible with human tissue before being tested in humans, Zhang says.

Randall Johnson at the University of Cambridge they say that inducing hypoxia in tumors may have negative effects, such as an increased tendency for the cancer to spread to other parts of the body. While this hasn’t happened in mice, the costs and benefits of using a battery in humans should be evaluated before any human treatment, he says.

We interrupt Donald Trump’s latest melodrama to speak to the Biden administration’s regulators. While the world isn’t watching, and certainly the press, regulators announced on Friday that they are essentially rewriting last year’s Inflation Reduction Act so that more electric vehicles can qualify for subsidies.

In exchange for his vote, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin insisted on numerous terms of the $7,500 EV IRA tax credit. He wanted to boost US manufacturing and ensure subsidies didn’t go to the rich. The law placed a $150,000 income cap on subsidies for individual buyers of electric vehicles, and a price cap on vans, SUVs and pickups ($80,000) and sedans ($55,000).

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