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Laura has electricity and has moved back home. No telephone
as yet and no internet.
Bobby's cancer shrunk by about ten percent and he is going on
with 6 more chemo treatments. Linda has an echocardiagram
today. Ted was able to get out of bed for a little while
yesterday. We are going to practice getting him in the
suburban Friday for his appointment Monday.
Linda needs an angio gram
but is reluctant. Perhaps they can talk her into it.
I am still breaking out in shingles. I can't imagine how
miserable they would be if I handn't had the shot. As it is
they burn and itch like hell.
I am cooking comfort foods. A huge pot of chicken soup which
I shared with Bobby and his family. the weather is just
right for soup. My favorite is French onion but the rest
of the family doesn't like it.
.
The modern father of laughter therapy is thought to be Norman Cousins, for 30 years the editor of the Saturday Review. Cousins recounted his own self-treatment with humor in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1976, after he’d been diagnosed with a very painful, life-threatening form of arthritis called ankylosing spondylitis. Doctors gave him little chance of recovery.
When traditional medicine failed to relieve his pain, Cousins left the hospital, checked into a hotel, took megadoses of vitamin C and watched Marx Brothers films and TV sitcoms, finding that 10 minutes of “belly laughter†allowed him two hours of pain-free sleep. He eventually recovered and wrote a series of best-selling books on humor and healing.
Norman Cousins’ account of healing through laughter was described in his ground-breaking book, Anatomy of an Illness as Described by the Patient, which inspired research into the effect of emotions on health that continues to this day.
The key to this kind of therapy is deep belly laughing, not just a smile.