Tag Archives: healing

Cancer Schmancer

I don’t have much good to say about cancer. But, in my experience, there have been some positives.

When my Mom needed chemotherapy for colon cancer, I took her back and forth to her treatments. We would often stop for lunch or dinner after these sessions and this time together gave us a chance to know one another better and have a closer relationship.

Then, during a trip to the Bahamas with my wife, I felt something on my back as I toweled off after a swim. I thought nothing of it, but it grew larger. Two months later, I was diagnosed with stage IIIC malignant melanoma.

I tried to stay positive throughout the whole ordeal. My war cry was “Cancer schmancer — at least I’m healthy! I’ll either beat it or die trying!” I was offered a clinical trial. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

After a monthlong course of daily IV chemo, I gave myself injections at home three times a week.

My mother passed away.

A second lump metastasized  into my lymph nodes.

After my fourth indoctrination ( that’s what I call an operation), a clown friend told me that I had been “blessed ” with cancer so that I would know what patients feel — inside and out. I believe him.

Another friend, a nurse, asked: “Do you know what makes a good nurse? A sense of humor and an incision.”

I had a lymph node section under my right arm, and stopped all chemo treatments. That was in 1999.

Humor in the healing process really works, and I have the experience on a personal and professional level.

There isn’t much fun in medicine, but a hell of a lot of medicine in fun.

Dad, Where Are Your Teeth?

I’m in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. The man who is laying there with all the tubes, wires and machines around him is my 79 year old father, Larry.

I stand beside the bed trying to figure what is going on. This is a man who was never sick one day in his life, but now he is doing battle with emphysema.

I have the uncomfortable feeling that he’s failing.

As I hold his now-soft hand, his index finger taps nervously against mine.

Tap-tap‑tap. STOP. Tap‑tap. STOP. Tap-tap-tap. STOP.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was sending an SOS.

Though he is unconscious, I know it’s time for amends to be made and to tell him I love him.

He was proud of me and often told me so. I was the youngest of three and the only child who showed an interest in music. His father was a music teacher from England and all his siblings played music. Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

I remember; when I was a kid, going to my Aunt Wilma’s house after church on Sundays and having family sing‑a‑longs. She was a great piano player and actually played background music for silent movies.

Dad played the violin and I played the ukulele and banjo.

I believe that vaudeville, burlesque and circus entertaining is in my genes. Although whenever I told my father that I wanted to entertain or play music, he’d say, “Get a shovel. Get a good job. One that has benefits and a retirement plan.”

As I stand at his bedside, tears are pouring down my cheeks. I look around at the powder- blue walls and an IV pole with some sort of pump that reminds me of a cross between a parking meter and a tape recorder reel. The TV above his head reads like a Dow Jones stock exchange report. I think to myself, “Should I buy or sell?”

His loose-fitting nightgown hangs on him, so I can see the wires stuck to his grey-haired chest. I look at his face. A small yellow tube is inserted into his nose. A large corrugated tube fills his mouth. Surgical tape holds them both in place. There is rhythmic song from his breath and the beeping of the machines that have become a part of him. It reminds me of my playing music with my family as a kid.

I stare at him and say, “Dad, where the hell are your teeth? You look terrible!”  I look in the drawer of the night stand but, they are not there.

Its getting late and its time to go. I stop at the nurse’s station and get one of those fluorescent pink sticky notes. I take a $5 bill from my wallet, fold it, place the note on top of it and write,

“Dear Larry, Thanks for the teeth. Love, The Tooth Fairy.”

Back in the room, I lean over the bed to give him a kiss and I slip the bill and the paper under his pillow before leaving.

That night, my father had a complete turnaround. They took him off the machines and were cleaning him up when a nurse found the money.

The room was full of laughter and joy. My father placed that money along with the note on the refrigerator back at the homestead, and told the story to everyone who visited. Miracles do indeed happen.

Fake puke isn’t very funny!

Me, BB!

I’m starting this blog because I believe people will never know the value of humor in the healing process until we learn to tell them! So far, the Hospital Clown/Compassionate Clown/Healing Power of Humor industry has not done a very good job of telling OUR story—the story of clowns who practice their craft on behalf of people who are ill or living in eldercare facilities. Yes, we talk to close friends, colleagues and relatives, but I hope this blog will speak to patients, their families, elders, medical staff, and other artists.

One thing we compassionate clowns have in common is our audience: Our audience is people who don’t want to be in the hospitals or aged-care homes where we work. Yet they really need the most effective wonder drug known to man: laughter. Like any medication, it should be dispensed by professionals – us!

Scientific studies have been done. I have read some of them and find them lacking. Anytime people write about humor and laughter in the healing process, they start talking about  the immune system, endorphins, and other things I know nothing about. I wouldn’t know an endorphin if I tripped over one! But I do know what FUN is. In this blog, I will share some real-life stories from my work as Nurse B.B., a hospital clown to children and old folks. I learned a lot walking the halls in my starched cap and size 38 shoes. So here goes:

  • First, acting stupid takes some smarts!

As a family entertainer for more than 27 years, I have studied with the very best in the business. I have learned my craft from Paris to San Francisco and points in between.  I absorbed the finer points of hospital clowning from the Big Apple Circus, where Michael Christensen started the “Clown Care” program that is in many children’s hospitals today. Teaching became part of the business because grown people wanted my advice and loved to hear my experiences. People say, “How nice – I want your job – How do you do that?”

  • Fake Puke isn’t that funny

The key to any effective medication is the proper dose. This is true with laughter, too. The key is to let it work, and don’t overdo it. Giving it in the wrong amount or at the wrong time can be damaging.

I have seen many clowns inappropriately use oversized props, rubber dog turds, fake puke, whoopee cushions, balloon animals and stickers, stuffed animals and off-color humor. All of these can be funny if you know how and WHEN to use them. Hospital clowns are taught to “read” the room, to be sensitive to the patient’s physical condition and anxieties. But traditional performing arts and family entertainment education does not properly prepare us to interact with and entertain sick, injured or life-challenged people. Clowning in hospitals and nursing homes should be a continued study. We will never have it down to a science, but there is an art to it.

Compassionate clowning, or humor for healing, is a service embedded in an experience that will last a lifetime. It’s time for us to talk about it. Here at BBClowns, I will tell what I know.