Better to Laugh than Cry

BY BRAYDON KEDDIE: Finding a way to laugh through Hodgkin’s lymphoma wasn’t easy for Peter Chatterton, but it proved to be a strong weapon in beating it. When he was on his way up to receive one of his many medical tests at the hospital, he was joking around in the elevator with a friend who had come with him. A doctor in the elevator with them recognized the floor Chatterton was going to was for cancer patients,.  

“Don’t lose that humour, because it’s going to keep you alive.” 

From there, Chatteron spent his treatment trying to look at things from a more humorous angle. He even gave his IV the nickname “Ginger.” 

“I’d say,  ‘I’m off for a walk with Ginger,’ and one of the nurses would reply, ‘There goes Fred Astaire.’” Chatteron says. “People would call it an ‘IV’ but I’d say ‘Nope, this is my dance partner. Where I go, she goes. I’m leading, she’s following.” 

Comedian Robert Hawke had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2005, but he decided he wouldn’t let the depression of the disease get the better of him. He wrote about his experiences in a book called Kicking Cancer’s Ass and co-produced a comedy play under the name of Norm vs. Cancer. It was in discovering a way to laugh during the hard times of his cancer that Hawke found strength.    

“We were all scared of monsters when we were little kids,” he says. “But it was really hard to be scared of (them) when you were giggling and laughing. When I was sick, cancer was kind of the big scary monster. But when I laughed...it helped me feel more powerful and took the fear out of the situation.” 

Peter Chatteron says comedy helped him through Hodgkin’s lymphoma

Hawke calls laughter “a serious weapon to help us.” Since recovery he’s been a patient advocate and speaks to physicians, patients and cancer survivors to give them his perspective of cancer. When meeting medical staff, he uses humour to break the ice. 

“I do a talk with physicians and nurses and I say, ‘I was very surprised to get cancer at what I considered to be a very young age, because I was about 40 at the time,” Hawke says.  “‘To me it seemed like to get cancer you either had to smoke for 15 years or you had to live next to a bauxite mine. And since I’d only lived next to a bauxite mine for six months I figured I was in the clear.’ When I make such an overt joke straight out of the gate, I let them know we’re going to laugh about this and it’s going to be alright.” 

From a medical perspective, Nadine Cross, a research associate with the University Health Network, says a lot of doctors don’t believe humour is a practical cure for patients. However, she does say endorphins caused by positive emotions have proven helpful in fighting disease.  

“There’s a lot about biochemistry and how the endorphins are released when you feel better or exercise, so it may come from that perspective,” Cross says. “There was a writer and he had a horrible disease and the doctors told him there was nothing they could do for him. So he just decided to rent a bunch of movies that made (him) laugh. He did that and he started feeling better and he actually recovered.” 

Chatteron found humour when he could relate with people who knew what he was going through. He attended a poker game where the players were cancer patients and they joked about everything from apple pie to toothpaste. 

“I said to them, ‘This morning I was brushing my teeth at home…’ and then they all started laughing,” Chatteron says. “Because the toothpaste had alcohol in it, and you can’t use alcohol after chemo. I almost burnt my beak off; I had to spit it out! They’re all killing themselves laughing because they’ve gone through the same thing.”  

Some didn’t share Chatteron’s humour on the situation. He recalled when he was laughing with a fellow patient during treatment, and a nurse voiced her opinion that cancer was nothing to joke about. 

“She thought we weren’t taking the disease seriously,” Chatteron says. “But I used my time wisely. laughing my head off. I could sit there and cry about it or sit there and laugh about it.” 

Posted in: Healing with humour