I had gone to the hospital because a group of doctors there were concerned that the mood of the cancer patients was so bleak, they feared the collective environment of treatment was being impaired.
At the suggestion of the doctors, I met with the veterans in the cancer unit. There were perhaps 50 or 60 of them. They sat in rows and were every bit as glum as I had anticipated.
I reported my conversation to their doctors, and said I doubted that they were helping them or themselves with the grim mood of the place. Certainly one could understand the reason for their feelings - and it was arrogant for anyone to lecture to them about it. But in coming to Sepulveda Veterans, they were reaching out for help - and they were entitled to know what would optimize that prospect.
I told them any battle with serious illness involved two elements. One was represented by the ability of the physicians to make available to patients the best that medical science has to offer. The other element was represented by the ability of patients to summon all their physical and spiritual resources in fighting illness.
I said I hoped the veterans would agree that their part of the job was to create an environment in which the doctors could do their best. One thing they might do to replace the grim atmosphere was to put on performances. We could give them scripts of amusing one-act plays. Some of them might wish to produce or direct or act. If they wished, we could help them obtain videocassettes of amusing motion picture films. Ditto, audiocassettes of stand-up comics. One way or another, their part in the joint enterprise with their doctors was to create a mood conducive to the best medical treatment obtainable.
The veterans accepted the challenge. When I returned to the hospital several weeks later and spoke to the doctors, I was pleased to have them describe the change not just in the general environment but in the mood of the individual patients.
When I met with the veterans, they no longer sat in a row. They sat in a large circle. They were part of a unity; they could all see one another. When they began their meeting, each veteran was obligated to tell something good that had happened to him since the previous meeting.
The first veteran spoke of his success in reaching by telephone a buddy he had not seen since the Korean War. He had tracked his buddy to Chicago and finally made the connection. They spoke for a half-hour or more. And the good news was that his buddy was coming to visit him in California.
Cheers.
The next veteran read from a letter he had received from a nephew who had just been admitted to medical school. He quoted the final sentence of the letter:
“And, Uncle Ben, I want you to know that I’m going into cancer research, and I’m going to come up with the answer, so you and your buddies just hang in there until I do.”
More cheers.
And so it went, each person at the meeting taking his turn. Then I discovered that everyone was looking at me and that I was expected to report on what it was that was good that had happened to me.
I searched my recent memory and realized that something quite good had in fact happened to me only a few days earlier.
“What I have to report is better than good,” I said. “It’s wonderful. Actually, it’s better than wonderful. It’s unbelievable. And as long as I live, I don’t expect that anything as magnificent as this can possibly happen to me again.”
The veterans sat forward in their seats.
“What happened is that when I arrived at the Los Angeles airport last Wednesday, my bag was the first off the carousel.”
An eruption of applause and acclaim greeted this announcement.
“I had never even met anyone whose bag was the first off the carousel,” I continued.
Again, loud expressions of delight.
“Flushed with success, I went to the nearest telephone to report my arrival to my office. That was when I lost my coin. I pondered this melancholy event for a moment or two, then decided to report it to the operator.
“‘Operator,’ I said, ‘I put in a quarter and didn’t get my number. The machine collected my coin.’
“‘Sir,’ she said, ‘if you give me your name and address, we’ll mail the coin to you.’
“I was appalled.
“‘Operator, I said, ‘I think I can understand the reason behind the difficulties of AT&T. You’re going to take the time and trouble to write down my name on a card and then you are probably going to give it to the person in charge of such matters. He will go to the cash register, punch it open and take out a quarter, at the same time recording the reason for the cash withdrawal. Then he will take a cardboard with a recessed slot to hold the coin so it won’t flop around in the envelope. Then he, or someone else, will fit the cardboard with the coin into an envelope, first taking the time to write out my address on the envelope. Then the envelope will be sealed. Someone will then affix a first-class stamp on the envelope. All that time and expense just to return a quarter. Now, operator, why don’t you just return my coin and let’s be friends.’
“‘Sir,’ she repeated in a flat voice, ‘if you give me your name and address, we will mail you the refund.’
“Then, almost by way of afterthought, she said, ‘Sir, did you remember to press the coin return plunger?’
“Truth to tell, I had overlooked this nicety. I pressed the plunger. To my great surprise, it worked. It was apparent that the machine had been badly constipated and I happened to have the plunger. All at once, the vitals of the machine opened up and proceeded to spew out coins of almost every denomination. The profusion was so great that I had to use my empty hand to contain the overflow.
“While all this was happening, the noise was registering in the telephone and was not lost on the operator.
“‘Sir,’ she said, ‘what is happening?’
“I reported that the machine had just given up all its earnings for the past few months, at least. At a rough estimate, I said there must be close to four dollars in quarters, dimes and nickels that had just erupted from the box.
“‘Sir,’ she said, ‘will you please put the coins back in the box.’
“‘Operator,’ I said, ‘if you give me your name and address, I will be glad to mail you the coins.’”
The veterans exploded with cheers. David triumphs over Goliath. At the bottom of the ninth inning, with the home team behind by three runs, the weakest hitter in the lineup hits the ball out of the park. A mammoth business corporation is brought to its knees. Every person who had been exasperated by the loss of a coin in a public telephone booth could identify with my experience and share both in the triumph of justice and the humiliation of the mammoth and impersonal oppressor.
The veterans not only were having a good time; they were showing it in their relaxed expressions and in the way they moved.
One of the doctors stood up.
“Tell me,” he said, “how many of you, when you came into this room a half hour or so ago, were experiencing, more or less, your normal chronic pains?”
More than half the veterans in the room raised their hands.
“Now,” said the doctor, “how many of you in the past five or ten minutes discovered that these chronic pains receded or disappeared?”
The same hands, it appeared to me, went up again.
Why should simple laughter have produced this effect? Brain researchers with whom I have spoken have speculated that the laughter activated the release of endorphins, the body’s own pain-reducing substance. The veterans were experiencing the same effects that had occurred to me in my own bout with inflammatory joints many years earlier. The body’s own morphine was at work.
In view of what is now known about the role of endorphins not only as a painkiller but as a stimulant to the immune system, the biological value of laughter takes on scientific validity.
“If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man,” Dostoevski writes in his novel, The Adolescent, “don’t bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, or seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you’ll get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man.”
- Norman Cousins