Category Archives: Hospital Clowning

“Seize” You Later!

My Pleasure?

Sometimes kids with unexplained seizures are hospitalized so that their brain activity can be monitored. So they are outfitted with electrodes hidden underneath a kind of muslin turban. Then they wait, sometimes days, for a seizure to occur.

Making clown rounds among these patients always involves a familiar scenario: Mom or Dad is looking at the child, knowing something is wrong. The child, staring back, is thinking, “I know something’s out of whack, but why is nothing happening?”

One day my partner and I were invited into the room of a teenage boy. The father looked at the kid, the kid looked at the father, the father looked at the mother, the mother looked at the kid, the kid looked at the mother. The ritual repeated. Until we arrived.

I asked the Dad if he had any money and started playing a little street shuffle called “two card monte”  with Dad and the kid.  (The person who holds the cards controls who wins, and I made sure the kid always won.) When I got the Dad up to 35 cents, the kid was thrilled! He was winning!

I told Dad it was time to pay up, and my partner and I started to leave. Just as we were walking out of the room, alarms began sounding, bells started ringing and the medical staff came flying into the room.  I thought for sure one of us had tripped over something. Regardless, we had been trained to scram in this kind of emergency, so my partner and I stepped into the next room.

Later, after everything calmed down, we were walking past the teenager’s room when his mother literally grabbed me. “Thank you so much for giving my son a seizure!” she said.

I was devastated. My jaw dropped. I just looked at her and asked,”Is this a good thing?”

“We have been waiting three days for it,” she said.

“Well, then, it was my pleasure!”

I immediately went down to the charge nurse and said,” I just gave someone a seizure. Should I call my lawyer?”

She replied, “That’s great! See if you can give one to Room 324. She has been here for more than a week.”

Apparently the boy’s seizure was brought on when he was elevated to happiness and just starting to come down to neutral. Because of this seizure, they were able to figure out exactly where in the brain it originated. Later, an operation cured the boy of his seizures altogether.

So every time I am on the neurology floor I think about wearing a two-sided T-shirt. The front will say, “Visit with the clowns” and on the back would be a waving hand and the words “Seize You Later!”

Quotable Quotes

Do you know how important “NOW” is?

Enjoy it as much as you can because no matter how much you want you hold onto “NOW,” it’s going to be “WAS.”

-Sid Caesar-

To know humor, one has to know life. Good and bad.

 -Grock-

A keen sense of humor helps us to

Overlook the unbecoming

Understand the unconventional

Tolerate the unpleasant

Overcome the unexpected and 

Outlast  the unbearable.

 -Billy Graham-

Get all the good laughs you can.

 -Will Rogers-

Hospital Orientation

Raise your hands now: How many of you have never seen the clowns before?

Raise them again if this is your first time seeing the clowns.

Don’t I look like I know something about fun? Many thanks to photographer George A. Taylor, MD.

Interesting. About the same!

Each member of Big Apple Circus Clown Care a is a professional performer – not a volunteer – selected for skill and sensitivity during a grueling audition process. Our training prepares us to work in the hospital environment. We learn proper hygiene and hospital procedures. We’re screened, we’re vaccinated, and we undergo an annual safety review. Our artistic quality and hygiene procedures are evaluated on a regular basis by our own “Joint Commission” on clowning.

Eight of the most talented and dedicated of these clowns can be found in the Clown Care program at Children’s Hospital Boston (CHB). There, they work with the hospitalized children, their parents and the hospital staff to ease the stress of serious illness by reintroducing laughter and fun as natural parts of life.

Collectively, and without boring you with details, some of their outstanding credits include:

  • Ringling Brothers Clown College graduates and teachers
  • Nationally and Internationally recognized
  • Performances from the streets to the center ring. From comedy clubs to the Lincoln Center. Broadway to Cirque Du Soleil.

Ironically (or maybe not), three of them were hospitalized at CHB as small children.

Patch Adams drew attention to the positive effect of humor and healing. Unlike us, however, he is a doctor who plays a clown. We are professional clowns who play doctors (one of my colleagues calls himself “Dr. Gongolfin.”)

Making clown rounds

Since 1995, the Clown Care Unit has been making clown rounds at Children’s. That’s 325 inpatient beds a week, 3 intensive care units, 11 floors of clinics and everything in between. We get our rundowns from the charge nurse or childlife specialist on all the floors we enter. They let us know any special details that will affect how we do our jobs. Do we need to take special precautions with any of the patients? Is anyone vision impaired? Unable to hear?

Here are some of our DOs and DON’Ts:

DO have fun. Join in! A problem shared is a problem divided, and a joy shared is a joy multiplied.

DON’T ask us to be associated with a painful procedure. Wait till after.

DON’T assume that someone is too young or two old for clowns. We have age-appropriate material for newborns to adults.

Professionalism and sensitivity, combined with the commitment to our art, are the keys that unlock the many doors of the hospital and bring us into the hearts of the children, families and staff. In the short time that we’ve been at Children’s Hospital Boston, I have discovered how important  and what an honor “IT” is to be able to “Walk someone to the door.”

There are many doors of the hospital. Registration, Admitting, Pre-Op, the elevator, the exam rooms, the cafeteria, the garden, and the front door. Even the door from this life to the next.

All these doors taught me a trick that is sure to make anyone smile:  Miss the door and walk right into the wall!

Laughter Has No Accent!!

"Cramming."
photo courtesy George Taylor M.D.

In the 1990s, I had the opportunity to be part of a “Clown Exchange Program”  with Le Rire Medécin. This meant I got to go to Paris for three weeks and clown around in six different French hospitals in Paris and Nantes.

I am not fluent in French. Well, actually that’s an understatement. I can’t speak a lick. But I soon learned that laughter has no accent. Working there wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be. Not knowing the language forced me to be more creative.

My biggest lesson, however, came during my third and final week there. My wife Lesley came over, and we did the usual tourist stuff: art museums, sidewalk cafés. In the Musée D’Orsay, something clicked! We were looking at this gigantic painting of men in a life boat on a storm-tossed sea, fighting a giant serpent. And I asked myself,  “What was the artist thinking, painting such an enormous canvas? No one could hang it on the wall unless they lived in a castle. . .  He painted it without electric light to see . . .  Why would he put so much time and effort into one painting?”

Then I had my “aha” moment. That painting had lasted for centuries and was an amazing piece of art. My artistry is fleeting, but no less worthy. There’s only one reason I slather on the makeup and walk into walls: it’s the look on my audience’s face (be it one or many). Not a laugh, just a ” look” — this is proof of my artistry.  I put my heart and soul into what I do, and while that “look” only lasts for a split second, the moment will be in their hearts for a lifetime. It’s something money can’t buy.