When I was 19, my oldest brother was critically injured in a farming accident. He was crushed between the hydraulic bucket and cab of a piece of equipment. Upon arrival at the emergency room, he was not expected to live for more than maybe a couple of hours-long enough for family to be summoned and arrive to say goodbye. Fortunately a surgeon on call reconsidered the circumstances and made the decision to attempt surgery to attend to the many abdominal organs that had been affected. He summoned several other surgeons and the team went about the business of attempting to repair organs and extend my brother’s life. After many hours of surgical intervention, my brother was placed in intensive care. Amongst other things, he was unable to breathe on his own and was placed on a ventilator. His injuries were so extensive that the break in his back, which would make him a paraplegic for life, was inconsequential. He remained in the local hospital for less than two days before it was determined that it was necessary to move him to Chicago to a spinal cord unit that could monitor and address all of the injuries including the broken spine. All of those years ago, the transport was in an ambulance as opposed to what today would have been a helicopter. He would die on the way to the hospital in the ambulance two times, being revived both times, to finally arrive in extremely critical condition. During the next two weeks, he would remain on ventilation, undergo multiple surgeries including spinal cord surgery, and be expected to die at any moment. There continued to be no reasonable expectation of survival from such extensive injuries.
My brother was 10 years older than I and someone I really looked up to. He bought me my first doll which was not a hand me down out of his own earnings as a grocery store bagger. But the thing I remember the most was that he was an expert practical joker. He was driven to play practical jokes that would result in the victim experiencing uncontrollable laughter. If his antics were not enough, tickling you till you could laugh no more was his next resort. And when he was finished, he would say “I guess you’ve laughed enough for today” as if there was a quota to satisfy. He had a really clean cut sense of humor that he frequently shared with others. He was a big fan of Bill Cosby and knew most of his routines word for word. He owned all of his albums at the time-yes I said albums. So here this guy who delivered a lot of laughter to others for as long as I could remember was laying attached to a Stryker frame, being turned like a chicken on a rotisserie every 30 minutes, with a breathing tube down his throat into his lungs, hanging on to life by a thread. I’m 19 years old and all I can think of is that he can’t communicate with us verbally, what he is trying to write on small notes is essentially illegible, and we really have no idea what is going on in his head but I don’t think it can be good.
Family members were only allowed to be with him one at a time for a half hour every two hours. So during my time to share with him, one part of me is beside myself with the grief for what is going on here and knowing that sharing that with him by anything I said or did could not possibly be a healthy thing for him. And, the other part of me is just trying to figure out what I can say or do. So, I resort to one of the biggest things he taught me, finding humor in the situation we were now in. Even though it was incredibly sad, there was a level of humor in the camp ground my family had made out of the intensive care unit waiting room, sleeping bags and all. So I shared with him our feelings that this was not the camping trip we envisioned taking with him this year. He was seriously going to have to recover and take us on a real one in a real camp ground. No visible response. So I ramp it up a little and move to the next thing I think he might find at least slightly funny. No response. Ok, now I’m going for it. I bring out my really poor Bill Cosby imitations. I can do some of those routines word for word too you know. I can’t deliver them like Bill, or for that matter my brother, but I do know the words and the general idea so I can even adapt them to our family of eight with no problem. Interjecting family members in the place of originally cast characters, I bring on the Noah series, Fat Albert and My Brother Russell. I thought maybe I’m not as good as Bill but I should as least get a little response of some kind. Better yet, we can get an exception and get one of my younger brothers in on it and he can do some of the parts! Surely that should get some kind of positive response. NOTHING! Oh well, I don’t give up easily so I keep the Cosby act going over the next couple of weeks even without much response.
Three weeks into this ordeal, the night shift comes on and everything seems to be rushed. It’s not clear to us whether it is my brother’s condition or what but things are stressed. Then the stress escalates. The nurse caring for my brother has made a terrible mistake in turning the Stryker frame. Between catching things on the frame and her tripping, she has pulled the breathing tube up and out of my brother’s lungs and it is now laying on the floor, still attached to the ventilator but not my brother. Reinsertion of the tube requires surgery and there is not enough time for that obviously. It is now or never, he either breathes on his own or he will be gone.
To the shock of his medical care providers, he is able to breathe on his own. In the next several days he begins to improve significantly every day. One of the things he attributed that to was my pathetic attempt at humor, humor of any kind. He said he was hearing it and sometimes even laughing in his head but had no way to show it. Sometimes he was “laughing” at nothing more than my attempts to use anything to lightening the very dark mood of the situation. The “laughter” took his mind off of the immense pain and gravity of the situation. It pulled him out of the times he was feeling sorry for himself and had weakening resolve to live. As he progressed over the next year, his injuries healing as best they could and he learning to acclimate to life in a wheel chair, he attributed humor, coming from all directions, to be one of the strongest driving forces in keeping him alive and going. Throughout the next 27 years, he was frequently finding even the smallest amount of humor in very difficult situations to keep going with a strong and positive attitude. I never saw him ignore the severity of a situation or be inappropriately disrespectful of a serious or solemn situation. But, when the time was appropriate, he always found a way to put laughter in the mix to take the situation in a more constructive and healthy direction.
I know there are studies from some of the most reputable universities and research institutions in the world that will tell you that laughter has healing powers. But, I don’t need the result of any studies to know what humor and laughter has to offer in everyday life. So I say, allow yourself to laugh everyday. Regardless of how bleak the situation may be, there is likely to be at least a sliver of humor somewhere in the day. Find it and allow the laughter to contribute a healthier life.