By Frank Bublitz
One of the best ways to handle a challenge like a disabling health condition is to make fun of it. Take it seriously, but not too seriously. I’ll use my situation as an example.
Since the age of five I have acquired five different health conditions that have affected my abilities is various ways. When I was five years old I developed Tourette’s Syndrome. At ten I began to have seizures. At seventeen I began to have a case of sleep apnea that was off the charts.
Then in my thirties I began to have weakness in my hands, tingling in my legs, and trouble standing still. Once I was asked to stand stock still for a commercial and got fired when I was unable to do so. At forty I found that disorder is called Charcot Marie Tooth Disease or CMT.
CMT4F is the formal name for the condition they think I have. No one is really sure what variant I have, but the most recent guess is that variant. So I own it. Literally. I call my condition CMT4Frank. Funny right?
Scientists has documented that humor has a very positive effect on your health. The more seriously a challenge affects you, the lighter you need to make it on your emotions. Scientific studies have shown that people who react to health challenges with faith, humor and optimism seem to recover from them more often.
People who acquire disabilities due to age or severe accident cope by using many types of “Adaptive Aids”. Since CMT has no cure, I rely on several aides for function and for comfort.
But they don’t always work. And frankly they can be a big pain in my behind. So, I use humor to deal with the emotional weight of my situation.
When I tripped myself and broke my hip I was dropped onto the X-ray table when two small framed nurses couldn’t lift and dropped me instead. Even then that was funny, but it also hurt.
After I got out of the hospital and rehab center I had a walker, cane, and Reacher. Each one of them has names. My first cane was red, so I called it candy. When I lost candy I got Sugar. And I joke when I forget my cane and ask a woman to help me find it, I ask her to give me some sugar.
My walker, except when I was staffing a program in a substance abuse treatment program, was called Johnny. We couldn’t call it Johnny Walker on site, so it was JW.
I still have some trouble bending and picking up things safely. So I use Jack Reacher to help me.
As I wrote earlier the devices don’t always work. Even with my braces I fall if I am not extra careful when I walk. Normally when I do fall at home and my family helps me up we joke about what score the Russian judge gave me for my landing.
Now those joking references get a lot of laughs from the right crowd. So do the stories of how my wife woke me during a sermon with a sharp elbow. And what I yelled before I realized where I was at the time.
So if you find yourself upside down, on your back, or otherwise messed up mess right back at it! Lift your spirits with Dad jokes, bad jokes, funny quotes, or anything that gives you a laugh. You’ll find that, as long as you wake up on the right side of the ground there is nothing you can’t laugh at!
