By Cheryl Rainford
Laughter is something that doesn't often come to mind when people start talking about life threatening illnesses. Yet, laughter through tears is what got me through the times when pain, frustration and feeling sorry for myself could have pushed me under. Soul-warming laughter came in many forms - dialysis nurses and techs, orderlies, doctors, bewildered friends, ward nurses, neighbors and my husband, Jon.
Making someone laugh to put them at ease, or to ease their pain even for a moment is a remarkable skill and an even more remarkable gift. No one requires care-givers to be funny, yet many times I thought some of my nurses and doctors must be rehearsing bits in the elevators.
I was diagnosed, rather suddenly with a rapidly advancing form of kidney disease just before my 31st birthday. A kidney biopsy at the beginning of March turned up a chronic kidney infection and immune system disorder the doctors told me would destroy my kidney function entirely. They said it would send me to dialysis by the beginning of May, and a transplant ward within a year. That's some pretty un-funny news. First I thought the doctors must be wrong. Then I wanted to know what I did to deserve it. Then I cried a lot of tears, because no one deserves it. It just happens.
Learning about my illness was rough. I was a driven, career-focused editor at a national magazine charged with writing daily news and features. I had a bungalow I was working on renovating, my first-ever new car, and a husband whose career as a lawyer was finally taking off. All we needed was the dog and the child to complete our idyllic life. A diagnosis like this was not in the plan. I cried wracking tears for the life I thought I might lose.
Then something amazing happened. I started to see the humor in my condition. One day I just started laughing. I don't remember when the first giggle-fit hit.
Maybe it was when Jon tried to wash my hair for the first time. He has pretty much al-ways kept his hair very short, with a brief, ill-advised foray into long hair in the late 80s. I had curly hair that stretched to my waist, but when my kidneys were in the end run, before I started dialysis, I was too weak with anemia and malnutrition to wash or brush it. My husband was suddenly thrown into the desperately unwanted role of hair stylist. As he patiently studied the instructions on the conditioner bottle and did his best to rinse the soap from my eyes, water everywhere, we laughed. We tee-heed as he tried to comb the tangles out, and he practically rolled on the floor when I tried to explain how to use the hairdryer's diffuser attachment to enhance my curls.
Maybe the guffaws struck when I was too weak to walk and he had to carry me into the house from the car. "My sweet bride," he swooned, his voice dripping with irony, kissing me as we crossed the threshold. I hit him on the arm and insisted he stop. Then we laughed together at the thought of me, a feminist career-woman, allowing myself to be carried into the house after our wedding.
Maybe it was the radiology nurse who came to get me for yet another test who set me off. He looked at my chart, called my name, then walked out of the room after I had waved and stood up, trying to keep my hospital gown from revealing too much leg. "Helloooo" I called out the door after him. He read my chart again, looked at me then said, "Cheryl, what year were you born?" When I told him he looked baffled and said, "but that would make you in your 30s."
"Who knew," I deadpanned. "Kidney disease is the fountain of youth." He looked at me a moment. I raised my eyebrows. "Imagine their surprise at work when they realize I'm not just there for take your daughter to work day." Then we laughed. We chuckled our way through the prep for the procedure. I laughed a lot, back then, at the thought of how old my body felt compared to how young the disease made me look.
My dialysis nurses would nightly find ridiculous things to poke fun at. One night, they asked all the patients to bring in their wedding albums and we rotated them around. The nurses joined in. One nurse was married during the 70s and drove cross-country with her new husband on their honeymoon. We laughed over our funny hairstyles and outdated clothes, at the funny margin notes in the albums recording meals eaten, places stayed and prices paid on our honeymoons.
We howled with laughter as the machines buzzed and swished and cleaned our blood. It was one of many four-hour periods of waiting for a transplant spent in the most healing practice imaginable. More importantly, it was a wonderful memory, life-threatening illness or no. The nurses gave us the gift of a break in the monotony and boredom of waiting for our ever-present beepers to let us know a new kidney was available.
Later, after my transplant, I suffered a few setbacks. There were additional surgeries, infections, a stint or two in the ICU and time totaling three months in and out of the hospital. On the plus side, I lived. As an added bonus, I now know all the shortcuts around the local hospital, and I've seen places most people will never see - including an extremely long, inviting, curving, carpeted ramp that connects the ICU to some sort of isolated, infrequently travelled backwater of the hospital.
Jon and I could have viewed the ramp as the entrance to a serious and somber place. I'd travelled it uphill, unconscious, on a gurney more than once. But our two inner-children turned around at the top and saw the first drop on a makeshift roller-coaster. He'd push me over there in my wheelchair late at night. Running to get up speed, past the curve he'd let me fly. I'd free-fall, waving my arms, squealing with laughter to the point of tears. We'd laugh even harder when we encountered doctors pretending not to notice us.
Laughter heals. It shapes and directs our perception of reality. But laughter only happens when someone gets it rolling. I am daily grateful to all the people who helped me laugh off my illness. In doing so they threw me a life-ring of resilience that got me through the hardest days of my life. What a small but beautiful gift.
Cheryl Rainford is a kidney recipient and a freelance writer who lives and frequently laughs in Des Moines.
