A Reason to Sing

Steve Travarca

When I was 4, I saw Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel. It was so beautiful! I knew I wanted to become an opera singer. I joined the Colorado Children’s Chorale and toured the world. I began private voice lessons at age 13 and enrolled in the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary, when I was 18.

As a coloratura soprano, I was trained to sing high, rapid notes.Training is demanding. During that year, I fainted a couple of times offstage and felt physically limited. The only time I didn’t feel limited was when I sang. At the end of the year, I decided to take some time off to serve as a missionary and share my blessings. To get the necessary physical exam and medical forms filled out, I visited my doctor back home in Denver.

After listening to my breathing, the doctor said, “I want to check something out.” The nurse performed an electrocardiogram to assess my heart’s electrical activity. I could tell she saw something unusual: Her eyes popped. A half-hour later, the doctor told me she suspected I had idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension. Another test confirmed her diagnosis.

Idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension is a life-threatening condition in which the arteries that carry blood from the heart to the lungs become narrow, making it hard for blood to flow through them and causing blood pressure to rise in pulmonary arteries. I would need a double lung transplant, and my doctor said the best place for surgery was Cleveland Clinic. I flew out to meet Drs. Marie Budev and Gosta Pettersson, who put me at ease and gave me hope. I began taking sildenafil, a medication that relaxes and dilates the pulmonary arteries.

The diagnosis and looming transplant frightened me, but my family and I prayed for strength. I decided to move on with my career, to sing and perform and live my life. I moved to Washington, D.C., and attended the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, a music conservatory in nearby Baltimore. From 2004 to 2006, I performed across the United States. The following two years, I commuted between Italy and Budapest. In Italy, I worked with voice teacher Rita Patane and an incredible conductor named Bruno Rigacci. In Budapest, I got a Fulbright grant to study with Eva Marton, one of the great dramatic sopranos.

I sang through 2008, but my condition deteriorated. The brutal schedule of rehearsals and performances became too much. By the summer of 2009, I had really slowed down. After the smallest walk — 10 yards — I had to stop and rest. In August, I was placed on the waiting list for lungs. Soon after, my legs swelled, so I went to the emergency room at a local hospital. After a short stay, I was transferred by helicopter to Cleveland Clinic.

I had no idea how sick I was. On Sept. 25, 2009, I had a double lung transplant and tricuspid valve tightening done by Dr. Kenneth McCurry. I was put in a medically induced coma for four and a half weeks after the surgery. My chest remained open, and I was on dialysis. When I finally awakened, my mother was there. Tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t speak or breathe on my own, but I was alive!

I spent three months in the hospital relearning how to sit up, stand, walk and talk. It was not fun, but the people at Cleveland Clinic — the doctors, nurses and technicians — were wonderful. They became like family to me.

It’s fitting that I sang again publicly for the first time in May 2010 at Cleveland Clinic, the place that saved my life, for the patient experience summit. The new lungs haven’t changed my voice, just my attitude about singing. I remind myself that I’m singing because of my donor, my mother and doctors, and the grace of God.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I know it will hold music. It’s wonderful to have big goals, but it’s more important to appreciate the here and now.

— Interview by Susan Keen Flynn