I was definitely more scared getting up on stage than operating on somebody,” Dr. Eric Rothstein recalls to Inside Edition Digital.
A heart attack brought a patient and his cardiologist to play music together at a small town pub in Vermont.
Dr. Eric Rothstein, a cardiologist at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, walked into the Skunk Hallow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners one Wednesday during open mic night, not knowing what to expect. It had been decades since he played the drums.
His patient Peter Meijer made him come.
Sure enough, without any rehearsal or knowing what songs would be performed, he fit in quickly.
“These were all songs that I had grown up playing, and I was really excited to know that I fit in with these guys,” Rothstein tells Inside Edition Digital.
Meijer, 57, of Windsor, Vermont, a general contractor, was painting a house when all of a sudden he started feeling chest pain. Another worker at the house drove him to a hospital in Springfield, Vermont. Meijer was then airlifted to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center within seven minutes.
In the operating room, Dr. Rothstein opened up Meijer’s right artery to insert a stent in order to restore flow and stabilize him. That’s when Meijer heard Pink Floyd playing in the background. For Rothstein, music helps him stay calm.
“It helps me find my happy place. Music has always been a big part of my life, and so that's kind of how I do my best work, is listening to the music I like,” he explains. “I have a relatively eclectic taste, so I usually open it up to the patient, what they want to listen to. When your patient is somewhat sedated, usually I pick for of them, and he seemed like a classic rock kind of guy.”
“The music was something that just stood out to me as ironic or interesting,” Meijer says of hearing “Comfortably Numb.” “I guess it put me at ease. Hearing familiar music was something that took away some of that stressful feeling I was going through, the fear and the pain. Because it was extremely painful. Extremely painful.”
“He made some comment about how I need to turn it up,” Rothstein recalls. “Now, of course, during the surgery, I needed to communicate. It's a whole team of us that work together, so it's kind of on the background level as opposed to putting on a concert for the patient. But once we had him stabilized in a better spot, we turned it up and we were all laughing at it.”
Meijer must have felt better immediately. He was persistent Rothstein join him one night for open mic night at Skunk Hallow after hearing his doctor was a drummer in his “past life” pre-med. Meijer, also a singer-songwriter, isn’t part of a band, but rather an “amalgamation of really good players. I just felt he was giving what he had to save me and I wanted to give something back somehow that was more than just a pat on the back or a card or something like that. I wanted to share something cool with him knowing that he was musical,” Meijer explains of the unusual invite request.
“I was still working on him trying to make sure that the stent was optimized. I think my response was, ‘Well, let me fix your stent first and then we can talk,’" Rothstein adds, "but didn’t actually take him seriously."
During a check-up appointment a few weeks later, Meijer pushed again.
It took a few months before Rothstein found the courage to walk in the door. “It was my first time in 20 years getting up on stage, so my heart was definitely pounding out of my chest for probably the first 30 seconds. I was definitely more scared getting up on stage than operating on somebody,” he recalls.
The first song they played together was ‘Peace Train” by Cat Stevens — which happened to be a good one to kick things off with. “It was burned into my mind, because my dad used to play that,” Rothstein says.
From that moment, “we cross over from the medical situation to a musical situation and a friendship,” said Meijer.
Rothstein has been back to the pub a few times since.
“It's been amazing getting to do this with you. Seriously,” Rothstein says candidly sitting next to Meijer.
“Just love you, man,” Meijer says back.
“I get a little misty when I talk about this, but I'm just so thankful to be here, and without Eric's help, I wouldn't be," Meijer says, "so that's something that sticks with me every single day.”
