EDM Twitter is a digital hellscape the place dignity goes to die—however typically it may be a supply of magic.
Such was the case with Jessica, a 31-year-old registered nurse tasked with the care of Angie, a affected person in her intensive care unit and a superfan of main digital music artist Zedd. From the second she used Twitter to make an emotional plea on behalf of her ailing affected person, Jessica skilled a snowball impact that proved the digital dance music group is larger than the sum of its elements.
Jessica, who spoke with EDM.com through Zoom and requested us to not embrace her or Angie’s final names for privateness, stated Angie is in her early 40’s and has been critically sick within the ICU for over three months. Regardless of dozens of main surgical procedures, she stays very sick.
“My function in [Angie’s] care as a nurse is all-encompassing and sophisticated,” stated Jessica, who’s answerable for superior monitoring of significant indicators, administering medicines, and working because the “air site visitors controller” for communication between the numerous members of Angie’s medical staff. “I sit together with her and speak to her, we paint her nails, I wash and magnificence her hair, we discuss music, she talks about her children, we tease her husband. I might go on without end about what my job actually is, however my job actually comes down to creating positive she is taken care of and is aware of she is protected and beloved, even when she isn’t at residence.”
Jessica, a essential care registered nurse who joined forces with EDM famous person Zedd to shock an ailing superfan.
“She’s not out of the woods, nowhere shut, however we’re doing our greatest on daily basis to battle for her,” Jessica added.
So she turned to the murky waters of EDM Twitter, a community sadly related extra with schadenfreude than benevolence. However it did not take lengthy for the group to rally behind Jessica and amplify her pleas to Zedd, the EDM luminary behind a numerous variety of generational dance anthems.
After tagging Zedd in an out-of-the-blue tweet containing obscure particulars about her affected person’s precarious medical state of affairs, Jessica put her telephone down and thought nothing of it. However this wasn’t some humdrum publish about Squid Sport or the most recent meme cryptocurrency. Inside minutes, Jessica says, a whole bunch of individuals shared it.
And her shot at midnight paid off. Only a half-hour later, Zedd, who has over 7.7 million followers on Twitter, messaged Jessica instantly.
Chatting with the Grammy-winning “Readability” producer, she defined that her ICU adopted a apply permitting sufferers to play their favourite music throughout bodily remedy classes. These workouts might be fairly grueling and even debilitating at instances, so the music curation helps to hype them up and preserve them motivated to hit their targets.
“Each single day, for 3 months, it has been Zedd,” Jessica instructed us of Angie’s bodily remedy music.
Jessica says her unit makes use of one iPad for households to see one another and talk. In the future, Jessica and Angie used the pill to look at Zedd’s fascinating DJ set from the 2021 version of EDC Las Vegas—one of many world’s greatest digital dance music festivals—whereas the previous washed the latter’s hair.
So Zedd purchased a model new iPad and overnighted it to Jessica’s hospital. However the pièce de résistance of his gesture lies throughout the machine itself.
Earlier than he mailed it out, a teary-eyed Zedd loaded a customized video message to Angie, urging her to maintain preventing and telling her how a lot it meant to him that she makes use of his music to soundtrack her restoration. He additionally invited her to any present she wished when she heals, in addition to a suggestion to fulfill and hang around backstage.
Overwhelmed after watching the video, Jessica, who attributes sure features of EDM tradition as having “fairly actually saved my life,” could not include her feelings as she ready to ship it to Angie, whose shared love of the style introduced the 2 nearer all through her care. When Jessica entered her room in a seemingly distressed state, she says Angie initially thought one thing dangerous had occurred, like a troubling prognosis.
However Angie’s bewilderment rapidly was a second of rapture that led everybody within the room to “bawl their eyes out,” Jessica stated.
“[Angie] checked out me prefer it was a joke at first. I might see in her face that she wasn’t positive it was actual,” Jessica continued. “We needed to watch it thrice earlier than she believed me that the video was actually for her! [Zedd] mentions her by title right away and I believe she was simply surprised. She cried, I cried, my boss and coworkers cried. It was a very particular second, after which all of us tried to see who might sing the excessive elements of ‘The Center’ one of the best.”
Out of respect for Angie and Zedd’s deeply private encounter, we have opted to not share the latter’s video message publicly. You’ll be able to watch a clip of the second Angie acquired the iPad and watched the video beneath.