Print

---

I spent a goodly amount of the Summer in a hospital and a nursing home.
I have PD, however, I am not at the end stage yet.  Though sometimes,
after you have suffered a perforated colon as I did, you sometimes wonder
if the end isn't much closer than you anticipate.  Also, since it has not
completely
healed as yet, and I'm still packing my icision twice daily,  I prefer to
laugh instead
of cry.

I watched the same scenario, described on this list recently ,
 being played out in that nursing home, with all sorts of diseases,
 not just PD. We all have to make that final exit one day, and believe me
when I tell
you, from my experience this Summer,
 PD isn't the worst thing you can have.

IMOHO,  If we didn't have a Caregivers list it would
be different, but we do.  I also feel the Caregivers list is more able to
cope with
and offer sympathy to those who need it so badly.  Its not that I don't care,
but rather that I care too much, and I myself need to heal.
So could we please go back to laughing?

I received this from my employer today---a "Lifestyle & Fitness Program"

Care and maintenance of your funny bone:
Humor as Medicine:

If we took what we know about the medical benefits of laughter,
and bottled them up, laughter would require FDA approval.

Laughter lowers blood pressure, increases muscle flection, and triggers a
flood of beta endorphins--the brain's natural compounds that induce euphoria.

But laughter's most profound effects occur on the immune system.
Gamma-interferon, a disease-fighting protein, rises with laughter; as do
B-Cells, which
produce disease-destroying anti-bodies,and T-cells, which orchestrate the
immune
response.

Laughter also shuts off the flow of stress hormones---the fight-or-flight
compounds that
come into play during times of stress, hostility,and rage.
Stress hormones suppress the immune system, raise blood pressure, and
increase the
number of platelets--which can cause fatal blockages in the arteries.

The average child laughs hundreds of times a day. The average adult laughs
a dozen times.

We need to find these lost laughs--and use them to our advantage.

Scouces. American Association for Therapeutic Humor; Lee Berk, MD
and Stanley Tan, MD, Loma Linda University

As Ever,
Marjorie Moorefield
just another librarian,with PD
64/9