Laughter Therapy
Friday, January 27th, 2006The other day my mother, humorist Tulara Lee, was diagnosed with lung cancer. This took both of us by surprise. Mom never smoked a day in her life. She is in great shape for someone in her eighty’s, she walks a mile everyday weather permitting and had no obvious symptoms of the disease. Mom went to the doctor for a referral for a dermatologist and because she was running a slight fever, which turned out to be a bladder infection, the doctor ordered some tests. The X-ray came back with a spot on her lung. After the CT scan we found out it was lung cancer.
After hearing such depressing news one would not think I would be writing an article on humor, but humor therapy is exactly what we used to get over the shock. Upon leaving the Doctors office we went to the movies. No we weren’t in denial and acted as if nothing happened. We went to the movies so that we could immediately start the healing process. You may be thinking, how is going to the movies going to cure cancer. I’m not here to say that we went to the movies to cure her cancer, however studies are showing that laughter may help prevent cancer, but I don’t have enough evidence of that to write about it yet. We went to the movies to put our minds in the proper frame of mind. I took mom to Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” a musical comedy. It was just what the doctor ordered. Mom laughed for more than two hours. The laughter therapy worked she no longer felt hopeless. Laughter can be cathartic. Laughter can cleans the body of the negative emotions that put us into a state of feeling hopeless. Comedian Henny Youngman (the king of the one-liners) said, “The definition of a cure is what a doctor does to a disease while killing the patient” When dealing with a serious illness doctors quite often only concentrate on the disease and not the patient’s emotions. I think that is why drug companies and doctors distribute prescriptions that may cure the disease but leaves the patient with a multitude of other health and emotional problems. I believe it is as important to treat the disease as well as the patience attitude. Dr. Hunter “Patch” Adams said, “Our job is improving the quality of life, not just delaying death.” Patch Adams uses humor therapy to help his patients. To learn more about Patch Adams I suggest the book “Gesundheit!” By Patch Adams with Maureen Mylander or the movie Patch Adams starring Robin Williams. On the way home from the movie mom needed to stop at the grocery store, while there we kept up with the laughter by using gallows humor. Mom picked up a carton of milk and started to put it into grocery cart. I laughingly said, “Just because you may have lung cancer doesn’t mean you still don’t have to check the expiration date on the carton.” She laughed and said, “I have so much confidence about surviving this I’m even going to by green bananas.” Laughter in whatever form can help you cope with life’s challenges. As a motivational humorist my goal is not to just educate others about the benefits of humor but to practice what I preach. Of course we are taking the illness seriously, but we are using humor to keep our spirits up and put her in the proper frame of mind so that if healing can begin it will. Mom will have her pity parties and I will have mine and sometimes we will have pity parties together, but laughter can help keep the pity parties from becoming depressions detrimental to her attitude and her health. This isn’t the first time we have used humor to cope with a serious illness in our family and it won’t be the last time.