It’s not about Crying all the Time: It’s ok to Laugh Sometimes Too!

A team of medical staff stood around my bed discussing my case in worried tones. None of them were sure what to try next for me. It was the third severe allergic reaction in a week that I’d had to different forms of Prednisolone. It was now confirmed that I wasn’t just allergic to an ingredient in the drug but to the steroid itself. I was told that I should never be given the drug again. Since I was recovering from the shaking and had a rash all over my body, I nodded in agreement. For those who don’t know, Prednisolone is a steroid, and it’s THE treatment for an episode of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. I don’t recommend having MS, but if you are going to have it, don’t be allergic to Prednisolone 😉 It’s not good.

As the staff continued to discuss their next step, I entered the conversation,

‘I have an idea for a treatment that could really help me. I think it’s going to make me feel a lot better.’

They all looked at me in surprise and expectation. Most of them didn’t know me. I think the Dr. who’d been responsible for my treatment since I was first sent straight to A and E by my GP knew me well enough by that time to be fairly sure that I wasn’t going to tell them of some new medical treatment though!

‘What’s that then?’ he asked cautiously.

‘A hot chocolate! I think that’s just what my body needs right now.’ They all laughed a lot. Then one of the nurses brought me a hot chocolate, and I confirmed that I was right, it was indeed exactly what I needed!

A Crying Sense of Humour

During the ten days that I was in the hospital, I got a reputation for having a sense of humour. One day a nurse brought in a colleague to introduce us and she told her,

‘This is the fun place to be on the ward. You can laugh here.’

That made me think. It wasn’t that I spent all of my time laughing; I didn’t. I wasn’t avoiding the pain or bottling up my emotions. I cried when I was given the diagnosis, and then surprised everyone by checking that the food trolley didn’t go past without leaving me something for my supper! I also cried off and on throughout my first night in hospital, although the nurses didn’t see the full extent of that, and the next morning I cried throughout my lumbar puncture, much to the obvious discomfort of the male Dr. performing it, poor guy. However, in spite of that, the impression that the medical staff had of me was of someone with a sense of humour. There always seemed to be something to laugh about, from the cleaner knocking the clock off my wall to the lady with dementia in the room next door trying to rob any of my bearded male visitors before they could get to me! A post lumbar puncture headache meant that, although I would have preferred to have been sitting up, I had no choice but to lie flat most of the time. On one occasion, the lady with dementia stood at my door and kept clapping her hands and gesturing for me to get up and get moving. I couldn’t stop laughing! She told the nurse, who came to take her back to her room, ‘That girl is so lazy! She just stays in bed and sleeps all day.’ Even now, my husband only has to repeat her gestures, and I’ll be in fits of laughter. The lady seemed happy enough in the midst of her dementia, so I hope I shouldn’t feel guilty for laughing. She certainly brightened up my hospital stay. When my Dr discharged me, he told me that I was memorable for my allergic reactions to prednisolone (an extremely rare allergy that many of the medical staff were intrigued by) and my sense of humour.

I Laugh Because I Can Cry

I learnt to cry and to laugh again when I came out of treatment for an eating disorder as a teenager. For the first year, every day was a battle. It was frightening to be bombarded with so many emotions after trying to hide from them, but I found that when I stopped running from the pain, I also started to find a new joy in the process. I believe that if I can laugh it’s only because I can also cry. I have to be free to do both, then rather than being an escapism; it’s merely part of being authentic. I look back on the past years and all the challenges, and I remember fun times in the midst of the pain. I remember a moment of laughing with my husband while he was fighting for his life in intensive care (much to the bemusement of some of the nurses; apparently it’s not usual to laugh in intensive care!) I remember times of laughter with my Mum while she was in the midst of Chemotherapy and I was recovering from an MS episode. I remember laughing with a friend, who had her leg in plaster, as we went to a coffee shop while I was still getting back into walking after an MS episode. It was touch and go which one of us was the most stable to carry the drinks! I remember moments of laughter in my Mum’s memorial meeting. Those are the memories that sustain.

Compartmentalising the Pain

In the midst of difficult life circumstances, I’ve found it possible to laugh only by compartmentalising the pain. By that I mean, making space for it, acknowledging it and grieving it, but not allowing it to become the whole of my life. I don’t want my desire to be a mother to go away because it’s part of who I am, but it cannot be my identity; it cannot become my whole life, or it would destroy me. I do cry about it sometimes, but I’m not prepared to spend my whole life crying, so sometimes I laugh! Sometimes I laugh at the platitudes or at the responses that I’d love to give to them. Sometimes I cry because they hurt. Sometimes I laugh while playing with a small child. Children are a blessing, and they brighten up my life. Sometimes I cry because I long for my own.

I recognise that it is easier to compartmentalise the MS when it currently has a relatively minimal impact on my life. I will face each challenge if it happens and not worry about that for now. There may be times, as I found while facing a crisis a few years ago, when a situation is so stressful and encompasses so many elements of life that it becomes overwhelming and difficult to compartmentalise. In such a case, I benefitted from professional help with some counselling sessions. No-one can do it alone. Sometimes I give professional help. Sometimes I’ve received it. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I laugh. Such is life. I continue on the journey, seeking nothing more than to be authentic. I’m so grateful for all the times when a sense of humour has helped me to survive, to continue to engage with life both spiritually and emotionally.

‘How much more does the one who has survived the drought appreciate the rain?

To him one raindrop is worth so much more

Than the numerous raindrops, many take for granted.

How can anyone who has always known sunshine

Ever understand the intensity of that moment

When the sun comes out from behind the clouds after a storm?’

An Extract from my diary in 1995, aged 18, while battling with an eating disorder.