Humor, Medicine and Folks Who Just Don’t Get It

4/14/2008

One of my responsibilities and passions is my job as medical director for Chai Lifeline Camp Simcha Special. Each summer this camp, which I helped found eight years ago, hosts 220 children, many of them with life-threatening medical conditions. It’s the largest, most sophisticated, medically supervised summer camp in the world.

The children and young adults who come to Camp Simcha Special have over 50 serious medical conditions including muscular dystrophy, spinal cord injuries, severe genetic disorders, spinabifida, end-stage kidney disease, congenital heart disorders, and cystic fibrosis. We have campers with tracheotomies, campers who need oxygen and ventilators, campers with feeding tubes, and campers on kidney dialysis. I head an amazingly dedicated medical team of nurses, physicians, paramedics, emergency medical technicians, pharmacists, and physical therapists. We are aided in our care of our campers each session by 275-300 other staff members aged 18-25--mostly volunteers—who we train in the medical and psycho-social skills needed to create a medically safe environment that still allows for fun. After all, it is camp.

Humor is the core of our program, and I think we’ve become masters at it. We are always finding unique ways to laugh at ourselves and allow the campers to laugh with us and at us. “Over-sensitivity equals insensitivity” is our motto. We’ve found over time that our campers relate better to people who take an open approach to their disabilities, are not over-sensitive, or who clearly love rather than pity them. We make a point of being under-sensitive, as this is more genuine and heartfelt.

This seeming lack of sensitivity about their physical and medical challenges opens the door to gut-busting humor. Our formula for success? Many of the skits and shows at camp are planned by the campers themselves. Here are a few examples of the activities they’ve come up with:

• The wheelchair press. In this event, team members in wheelchairs competed to see who could get the most wheelchair weight on top of a double plywood board before the staff volunteer underneath it cried “uncle.” This is of course done with close supervision.
• “The Medical Price Is Right.” In this game-show take-off campers compete to win an array of prizes by guessing the actual prices of the medical equipment and supplies they normally use. I become “Bob Barkowitz”, and campers sashay around like Price is Right glamour girls eloquently displaying the various machines and medications. As the kids make light of and laugh about the items that keep them alive and well, I wonder, where else in the world can a group of campers challenged with the most serious and often life- threatening conditions laugh together at their own situations?
• “Whose Tongue is it Anyway?” One of the campers with muscular dystrophy and I have come up with a new skit for camp based on the fact that many individuals with muscular dystrophy have very large tongues. In fact Joseph (not his real name) takes pride in his disproportionately large tongue, displaying cheerfully it upon request. For this event we plan to measure the tongues of willing campers and staff and weigh them on a mini-scale. We’ll take photographs of the “measure-in” and “weigh-in,” judge them, and declare a winner. Then we’ll display the unlabeled photos and have the kids try to identify their fellow campers and staff members. The planning alone has kept Joseph and I in stitches, and he’s looking forward to being both my co-host and a contestant.

Our connection to our campers continues throughout the year. This winter Joseph was hospitalized for pneumonia. Camp volunteers—including one of my sons—and staff helped keep him company round the clock. One day Joseph called me to share what he thought was a hilarious story about people “who just don’t get it.” The hospital where he was being treated is known as a bit of an ivory tower, with a staff that rarely displays emotion. According to Joseph, a social worker and an attending floor doctor came in that day to ask him some questions about discharge planning. The kids from school and camp had brought Joseph a dozen balloons from the hospital gift shop. Both the social worker and doctor looked at Joseph and the boys with puzzled faces and asked, “What’s with these balloons. They all say, Congratulations! It’s a girl!” When Joseph explained that it was a joke, the hospital staff admitted they just didn’t get it. Joseph’s replied, “When you understand the humor of these gifts, you will truly be a healer.” As they were about to leave the room, he added, “Actually the gift shop was all out of balloons that said “Congratulations, you have muscular dystrophy”.

The boys all laughed as the doctor and social worker high-tailed it out of the room. Joseph told me that he is often shocked at how poorly trained doctors are in their use of fun and comedy. But he’s committed to teaching them—he planned on sending the social worker a card thanking her for helping him with a tough pregnancy.

These are the seeds of healing that we have learned to plant at Camp Simcha Special. True healing is the kind that allows a boy with muscular dystrophy to find ways to cope by using laughter. We have become very good at this at our camp, and I am so proud of this aspect of my career. As a pediatrician who cares for a large number of patients with high-risk problems, I have found time to laugh with so many families over the years. Just as in camp, when they see us laugh, they laugh. Joseph is but one example of the power of laughter and how it can add years to a life filled with challenges.

As for those who just don’t get it, I doubt that they ever will. But we will keep up the good fight and keep on laughing in the face of life’s curves in the road.