Laughter, an antidote to depression

Excerpts from Steve Goodier’s post in  www.LifeSupportSystem.com

There are many ways to respond when life takes a serious turn, but even then, perhaps especially then, one of the best is to find some humor.

Katie was a young woman with a great, big problem. She was a teenager dying of leukemia. Katie's mother wrote to tell how her daughter approached her disease. She told about a time, shortly after a bone marrow transplant, when Katie's head was “slickly bald,” as she put it.

One day Katie heard the doctor coming on rounds and ducked into the bathroom. Her mother heard her giggling and asked, "Katie, what is so funny?"

She put her finger to her lips, pulled a Nike ski cap onto her head and crawled into bed.

When the doctor came in, she said, "Well, Miss Katie! How are you feeling today?"

Katie frowned and said, "I am OK, I guess... but I just have this 'splitting' headache.”

She pulled off her ski cap and there on her bald head was a huge red crack, which she had drawn with a marker. As the doctor recovered from her initial shock, the room exploded in laughter.

Katie did not survive the cancer, but she conquered depression and despair and found an authentic way to live as fully as possible her last months of life.

“It DOES help!” Katie's mother asserted at the end of her letter.

Mark Twain says that the "human race has unquestionably one really effective weapon – laughter.”

Laughing at the twists and turns of life may not be your first response, but it can be one of the best.