Humor in the Hospital

Life in a hospital, being poked and prodded, is never laugh-worthy. Backless hospital gowns and detestable hospital cuisine simply are not laughing matters. Ask one hundred people for adjectives to describe a stay in a hospital, and it is doubtful that even one percent might reply, “Humorous!” Nevertheless, I have learned through weeks and weeks and years of hospitalizations, that humor must be an adjective commonly used to describe the experiences.

You might have seen the movie “Patch Adams”. The movie depicted the life of a real life doctor, Dr. Hunter Campbell Adams, who utilizes humorous play and tactics to aid in the healing of the sick. It is documented through studies, that humor has a vital role in the healing and recovery of the sick. My motto – It is better to laugh than to cry when in the hospital!

While the verdict is out on whether laughter plays a role in healing, the American Cancer Society and other medical experts say it reduces stress and promotes relaxation by lowering blood pressure, improves breathing and increases muscle function. I have kept a quote for some time and I have only jotted down the source as a support group at Montefiore Einstein Cancer Center at Montefiore Hospital. There is much truth to this quote: "Every time they (cancer patients) laugh, it's like kicking cancer out the door. They're taking control; they're saying it's not controlling me."

It is up to the patient (and her family) to implement techniques that will welcome humor into the most painful and trying stays. These ploys even have been engaged in my Intensive Care rooms. I will add a disclaimer that not all medical professionals agree with the Patch Adams approach to medicine and humor is frowned upon and often will result in the removal of your humorous visitors. Let me share with you the whoopee cushion experience.

First, for those of you unfamiliar with the whoopee cushion, let me attempt an explanation. This small plastic device emits a noise resembling, um, let us say human flatulence, when someone sits on it or squeezes it. Our son-in-law, the always practical joker, brought his whoopee cushion to my Intensive Care room one evening. Unbeknown to his wife (our daughter) or me, he sat ever so innocently in the corner chair. When the nurse came in for the evening evaluation and pulled out her stethoscope to listen to my abdomen for bowel sounds, he coordinated the noise from the whoopee cushion with her assessment attempts. All of us found his humorous attempt hysterical. The nurse did not.

Then we had the early spring blizzard that arrived during one of my hospital stays. Being an avid snow-lover, our daughters knew that I would be even more disturbed about my hospital stay when I realized that six inches of early spring snow had fallen as I remained in the hospital. They took the emesis tub (Google this if you do not know what it is used for in the hospital setting) and collected snow and built me the greatest one foot tall snowman and brought it up to my room. Needless to say, his life was short-lived in the 70 degree hospital environment, but Frosty boosted my morale greatly that day.

Rubber gloves always provide hours of entertainment for visitors with little else to do but stare at a sick person in a bed. My brother was always especially gifted with being able to put a rubber glove over the top of his head, pulling it down below his nose. Then he would begin exhaling (nearly to the point of hyperventilation or suffocation) until the glove would blow up to a size nearly that of a beach ball. Nurses popped in on occasion to witness him in this interesting pose. One day, he had blown up one of his super-sized rubber gloves and tied it off, resembling a large five-fingered volleyball. All my visitors were playing a game of hospital bed volleyball, serving and spiking the glove-balloon back and forth across my bed. Suddenly, the door opened. Everyone froze and this large glove-balloon floated down onto my bed. Trying to think quickly with my fuzzy, pharmaceutical coated brain , I grabbed it and stuck it under the blanket. Granted, the nurse couldn’t see our glove-volleyball, however, it then looked like I was either nine months pregnant or very ill with a bloated abdomen. For the life of me, it must have been the medication, because to this day, I do not know why I thought I could hide it under the blanket!

Hopefully, this post will encourage patients and their families everywhere to focus on improving the humor levels in hospitals. It is for our well-being and I hope that fun-loving readers will post their funny hospital experiences on my Blog, so that we all will improve our immune function as we laugh and laugh and laugh and ……….