Laughing To Keep From Crying

The first month of 2010 has been rough, no way more so than the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti. In the face of unmitigated tragedy, is there a role for humor?

“You know it is a catastrophe,” a colleague said to me, “when even the shock jocks don’t joke about it.”

The absence of crass one-liners capitalizing on other’s pain doesn’t mean that humor doesn’t have a real and vital role in helping people process and address tragedy.  It’s been fascinating to watch some of the ways nurses, emergency response workers and the public at large have been reaching for laughter in the face of all that has happened. Read the story »

Humor Lets You Own Your Disease: JNJ Talks to Kelly Kunik

“I didn’t want my friends to be afraid of me,” Kelly Kunik said. “Who wants to be the kid who passes out? So I made jokes. I didn’t want them to be nervous, I wanted to be normal.” That sense of humor that Kunik used growing up as a Type 1 Diabetic (she was diagnosed at age 8) comes shining through her writing, which you can read on her blog Diabetesaliciousness. We recently sat down with Kelly to talk about humor, the role it plays in chronic conditions, and what patients wish their health care providers knew.

JNJ: Humor’s obviously a large part of your life. Why don’t we start out talking about the connection between having diabetes and the power of laughter?

Kelly: There’s absolutely a very strong connection between humor and diabetes. It lets you own your disease, rather than letting it own you. Once you can laugh at something, you own it. Things become easier, all across the spectrum.

When you find a community of other people who are facing the same situation, and you find you can laugh about what you have in common — cutting your finger and running for your meter because you don’t want to waste the blood! — it makes things more bearable. You don’t feel like you’re alone. You’re not the only person who doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. You’re not the only person who has to go exercise, even when you really don’t want to. Read the story »

Classic JNJ: You Might Be A Gomer If….

If the stand up comedy routine, “You might be a Redneck if…” was adapted to GOMERS (ie, representatives of the Get Out of My Emergency Room class of patients, it might go like this:

You might be a GOMER…

If you reach down to scratch your crotch and come back with a Foley.

If your BP is 40/20 and you’re still completely coherent.

If your answer to every question is one statement and it’s something like “Lubba lubba lubba.” Read the story »