Posted by John Graham-Pole
Dr. Patch Adams says: “Show me the data that solemnity ever cured anything!” I first met Patch, Founder of the Gesundheit Institute, in 1995 when I invited him to present at an Arts & Health symposium we were running at University of Florida. He gave an uproarious demonstration of his life at work and at play, which he entitled: “Humor and Health: Rationale for a Clown’s Life.”
I had actually met him the day before, when he somehow found his way to my children’s oncology clinic as I was moving from door to door checking on my patients who were receiving their chemotherapy infusions. I’d just finished fixing a little guy’s IV site when I found myself swept up into six-foot-six Patch’s arms. The whole clinic—patients, parents, nurses—erupted in laughter as we proceeded to complete rounds together, with five-foot-eight me hoisted aloft his powerful shoulders.
Patch’s courageous and crazy convictions stayed with me. Why indeed can’t laughter and joy, coupled with a whole lot of loving kindness and compassion, claim their central place in health care? I may not have adopted a complete clown outfit and rebelled entirely against our teaching hospital’s dress code, but I could certainly push the envelope.
We doctors were obliged to wear ties in those days, so I acquired a holey “Swiss cheese” one, made entirely of very expandable yellow elastic, full of cheese holes and complete with a nibbling mouse hanging off its end. I took to wearing colourful odd socks, which quickly became a trademark with the children. I began carrying an assortment of small but very squeaky toys in my pockets, along with a clown mask and wig, several red noses and a three-foot-square Union Jack handkerchief. I quickly found out that grown-ups enjoyed an impromptu clown display as much as my young patients when the moment called for it.
My three-foot-square handkerchief sometimes let me bring healing humour to hard situations. I had just broken the news to a fourteen-year-old patient, Jess, and his parents that he would have to receive several more rounds of chemo for his cancer—something none of them had prepared themselves for. Mom at once began to cry, while both Jess and his dad did their awkward best to comfort her. After a few more moments, Mom set about drying her eyes while striving to summon a small grin. Which quickly turned into a much larger one when I took a long moment to draw my carefully folded Union Jack hankie inch by inch out of my pants pocket, shake it out to its full dimensions, and offer it to Mom.
Then a new patient gave me a powerful reminder of the healing power of humour. When I first met Leah, she’d already received her first chemotherapy doses, leaving her mouth and throat raw and painful—a debilitating side effect of our chemotherapy that is pretty much impossible to prevent. That, coupled with the pain caused by the large mass in her hip—a biopsy had shown an extensive Ewing’s sarcoma in her iliac crest—had put her in a thoroughly grumpy mood towards the whole medical profession that Monday morning.
“Give me morphine,” she croaked through badly cracked lips.
And as I was to find out, Leah didn’t hesitate to make her feelings known. As I approached her bedside to introduce myself, she reached up, grabbed my tie, and yanked it hard. I instantly regretted I wasn’t wearing my expandable rubber one.
A quick inspection told me her mucositis was extremely severe. I wrote up a “stat” dose of the much needed narcotic to ease her pain, which I made sure would be administered as often as need be. Twenty-four hours on, I was back at her bedside–this time making sure I was wearing my cheese necktie. She promptly presented me with a cartoon drawing of the two of us.
Leah’s black-and-white image beautifully captured her own very real anger, and her new doctor’s astonishment at being greeted with his patient’s physical assault. The time intervening between my two visits had been long enough for feisty Leah to reassert her sense of humour, and to put her considerable artistry to work to capture the moments of our first meeting. She went on to create a whole colouring book for children who were undergoing stem cell transplants for advanced cancer, which was published by the Leukemia Society of America.
If children being treated for cancer can give themselves a boost of healing humour, then let’s all of us follow their example. The magnificent pianist and comedian Victor Borge called a smile the closest distance between two people. And comedian Elbert Hubbard, who died far too soon, put it this way: “Don’t take life too seriously or you won’t get out alive.” So just remember that the best time to laugh is when you least feel like it—when you’re mad, sad, embarrassed, or scared. And I mean a belly laugh that lasts at least 30 seconds. You’ll be amazed how quickly your miserable emotions turn to joyful ones.
