In July 2013, country music star Randy Travis went to the emergency room complaining of congestion. The 54-year-old had a packed schedule with tour dates and an acting role in an upcoming TV pilot. But all of that was put on hold. Travis was admitted to Heart Hospital Baylor in Dallas, where he was treated for dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) caused by a viral infection of the heart. With DCM, heart chambers enlarge and do not pump blood sufficiently.
At one point, his heart stopped completely and doctors rushed to put him on life support and into an induced coma, a procedure that can help protect the brain.
When he came out of that coma 48 hours later, physicians discovered that Travis had suffered a stroke, which had affected the entire central region of his left brain. Doctors suspected that a blood clot had formed in his heart and traveled to his brain, causing the trauma.
During a second coma when Travis’s lungs had collapsed and he was placed on life support, medical providers told his then-fiancee, Mary, that he had a 1 percent chance of survival and she should consider taking him off life support.
“I went to his bedside and asked him if he wanted to keep fighting,” says Mary, who became Travis’s wife in 2015. “A little tear fell out of his eye and I knew he wasn’t ready to give up.”
Mary turned to the doctors and told them to get on board keeping him alive. And they did.
Now, six years post injury, Travis spends most of his time at his ranch with Mary, and attends a weekly Bible study class in a nearby town. Because the stroke has severely limited his ability to talk, Mary stays by his side at most times to help him communicate.
Travis is also committed to helping others overcome similar struggles. He and Mary started The Randy Travis Foundation, which provides support for victims of stroke and cardiovascular diseases. Travis detailed his struggles and his hope for the future in his book, Forever and Ever, Amen: A Memoir of Music, Faith, and Braving the Storms of Life.
Even during his bleakest moments. Travis wrote that he was determined to get better and return to doing the things he loved in life.
“I had braved numerous storms in my life and had frequently faced overwhelming odds, times when others had advised me to give up. I hadn’t quit then — and I wasn’t about to quit now,” he wrote.
The Road to Recovery
Over the course of five and a half months in two hospitals, Travis had three bouts of pneumonia, three tracheostomies, and two brain surgeries. In time, the medical care paid off. Just before Thanksgiving of 2013, Travis was finally able to go home.
For the next two and a half years, he devoted four to five hours every single day to rehabilitation to learn how to walk again and regain control of the right side of his body.
Early in his recovery, he struggled with some comprehension problems related to his stroke. When he first came home from the hospital, certain everyday objects — such as a remote control, a television, and a toilet — didn’t make sense to him.
“He didn’t grasp what they were and what to do with them,” says Mary, “but he slowly regained all that understanding.”
To make matters worse, Randy also dealt with vision problems during his first six to nine months home from the hospital.
“He had a hard time focusing and seeing but all of that came back to perfect,” says Mary. “It’s just a test of time.”
One of Randy’s biggest obstacles has been trying to get back his ability to speak. About 25 to 40 percent of stroke survivors suffer from this communication disorder called aphasia, according to the National Aphasia Association.
“Aphasia is basically a short between the brain and the lips,” explains Mary.
Randy describes his challenges with the condition in his book:
“In my case my brain was functioning, and I could understand what Mary said to me, but I could not respond in anything close to a sentence. When we first returned home, I could barely speak at all. We spent three months in speech therapy before I learned to say the letter 'A.' Eventually, after about a year and a half, I could say 'yup,' 'nope,' and 'bathroom.' I could also say 'I love you' and a few other phrases but not much more. All this was extremely frustrating for me; I felt like I was trapped inside the shell of my body.”
Mary describes the process as constant repetition, slowly rebuilding the elements of language with the help of a speech therapist.
“It was very tedious but Randy has a great will,” she says.
Learning to Live Again
After two and a half years of intensive rehabilitation, however, Randy began to feel blocked by a lack of progress and would shut down during sessions.
“He was just done with it as far as that portion of therapy,” says Mary. “I think you get to the point where it can be counterproductive, and you have to seek out other avenues of learning.”
For Randy, this meant engaging with people and living life. He started spending more time in everyday situations — interacting with his wife and friends, caring for his dogs and horses, walking around his ranch, and going to concerts.
“Every day there are new words that come out, and I think it’s just being exposed to living life,” says Mary. “As soon as you can get back to normal the better, and I think that’s as good a therapy as anything.”
Having the support of his wife, family, and friends has lifted his spirits and given him strength. Mary advises other caregivers to be patient, encouraging, and never give up.
“Aphasia patients don’t want to be treated like there’s something devastatingly wrong. They want to enjoy the same things that they did before in life. Randy is the first one who wants to get dressed and go somewhere — go to dinner or go meet friends. He makes my job very easy.”
The Healing Power of Music
Since he was a child, Travis loved country music — especially the songs of more traditional country musicians like Hank Williams, Lefty Frizell, and Gene Autry. At age 10, he learned to play guitar. As a teenager, he was getting into trouble with drugs, alcohol, and the law, but his musical talent provided him with a path to better things.
By the age of 26, he signed to Warner Bros. Records, and he soon began racking up No. 1 hits. His first album sold more than four million copies, and he followed that debut with a string of top-selling albums.
Given his passion for singing and songwriting, it may come as no surprise that music plays a vital role in his rehabilitation.
When Travis was receiving therapy from Select Rehabilitation Hospital in Denton, Texas, about 35 minutes away from his ranch, he found he could remember the chords to his songs.
Although music was not an official part of their program, a woman named Tracy who worked in the marketing department at the rehabilitation center played a keyboard for Travis during her lunch break.
Because "Amazing Grace" had always been one of his favorite songs, Tracy tried to get Travis to sing along.
“I wanted to sing, and I tried, but the words and melody would not come together in my mind,” Travis wrote in his memoir.
Tracy, however, would not give up. After months of practicing and encouragement, they had a breakthrough when Travis sang a full verse from memory.
“There are some who can barely say a word but they can sing,” says Carol Persad PhD, director of the University of Michigan Aphasia Program (UMAP) in Ann Arbor, who uses a music therapy approach established by prior research, called Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT), with some of her patients. “Music is one way to get back to words — it uses a different part of the brain from speech. That’s why Travis can sing 'Amazing Grace.'”
“With Randy every fiber in him is music, so being back in and around music is very healing and encouraging for him,” says Mary.
In 2016 when he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, he stunned the crowd in Nashville by singing some of the lyrics to "Amazing Grace."
Randy’s now on a mission to “pass out hope” and show others that there can be life after stroke. He and his wife encourage survivors and their loved ones to stay positive, and explore the different options that may help a patient recover.
Because Travis has such a strong belief in the power of music, his Randy Travis Foundation devotes part of its efforts toward supporting music and entertainment education for at-risk children. The organization also raises awareness about stroke and cardiovascular diseases.
“Life doesn’t come with an instruction book and people don’t have an owner’s manual,” Mary says, “so just love each other to pieces, be patient, and keep fighting the fight.”