As most of my readers know by now with my heart attack from two years back, one of the side effects was that I lost about half of my vital capacity (total air intake). While in physical therapy, I asked my therapist if it would ever come back and in a very encouraging fashion she assured me that it would eventually return. It didn’t. The reason I was able to recognize the actual amount of this loss was from the fact that most of my practice material is pre-recorded with click tracks. Exercises which were played in one breath now required an additional breath half way through.
This week was a deciding point in my life. If my air was not coming back as my therapist had guaranteed, I would either have to live with it or do something to solve the problem myself. If you know anything about me you realize that being content with mediocrity is not one of my strong suites. So, to get started on the improvement in my air supply, I decided to contact a good friend who is very well versed in the art of breathing and his name is Prof. Donald Little, who recently retired from the music faculty at the University of North Texas just minutes North of our house. Exchanging a couple short Emails set me on my way to becoming Mr. Macho Lungs. Don was a student of the legendary Tubist with the Chicago Symphony Mr. Arnold Jacobs. As well as a tremendous performer, Mr. Jacobs was the authority on the respiratory system. With Don’s help, we decided on a medical instrument designed to increase one’s air intake and after a short trip into Denton, I was the new owner of a Hudson RCI Voldyne 5000 Volumetric Exerciser described as an “Incentive Deep Breathing Exerciser For Maintaining and Improving Inspiratory Volume and Respiratory Fitness”.
If you are reading this post to find out if this little number will help your air intake, you are wasting your time for I have to run it through some tests myself to find out if it is worth the $15 I laid down for it this morning. A one month test should be enough time to give my opinion of this product so check back in about a month and see if it had improved my air supply….. or not.
