Well, If Laughter Is the Best Medicine...

PH sucks, and we all know this. But if we have to have it, we may as well find the humor in it. Maybe my slightly twisted sense of humor got an extra boost through all this, or maybe it’s because I delight in the ironic, but I usually find something funny at my hospital visits. Here are a few stories…

The very first time I found PH to be hugely ironic was during the diagnostic process. Right after a definitive diagnosis, they subject you to a whole bunch more tests to try to determine why you drew the short PH straw in the first place. One of the tests is the VQ lung scan, where they look for little clots that might be causing the issues.

What everyone failed to tell me until minutes before the test was that the dye they inject into you in order to view these itty-bitty places in your lungs is radioactive. Which means YOU are radioactive for several hours after the test. Which means you just might get pulled over for suspected terrorist activity if you are driving home and the cops happen to have their radiation scanners running.

Really? You’re going to inject me with dye, shove me into a tube (being “driven” by a tech in training I might add) and then let me go home while running the risk of getting pulled over for being radioactive?? What else you got?!? (Side note: I was not pulled over, but I kind of wish I had been. It would have been fun to explain.)

Then there was the time I went in for a cardiac MRI and my appointment was bumped for the convict already in the tube, because earlier he was running late getting there from jail. Uh-huh, he can go first, I’ll wait.

Both cardiac MRI’s have had music pumping into the machine to distract me from the tube inches from my face, that I can not escape. Both times some song has come on about not getting enough air or watching every breath you take. Okay, that second song is just creepy and stalker-ish anyway, and 10 points to anyone who names that tune.

Then there are the medical professionals I come into contact with. There was the tech in my second right heart catheter that bore a remarkable resemblance to Harry Connick Jr. That wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been strapped to the table and stripped of my dignity due to the, er, preliminary procedures for a RHC through the groin.

I have started to threaten to collect a fee from every hospital personnel who strolls by my gurney while I wait in the hall for my turn in the cath lab, stops, back tracks, and exclaims, “OH, you’re too young to be here!” Seriously, I’m going to start charging, and then I will single-handedly pay for you all to attend Conference in June of 2012 because I will have collected that much money.

I delight in schooling marginally informed professionals about PH, particularly when they dare say, “Oh, PH, sure I know all about that. So, they treat you with oxygen, right? And then, what, give you steroids or something?”

There are many benefits to being well informed about your disease. But rattling off a bunch of information to a respiratory therapist who shot you a dirty look when you tried to explain what PH is, and then stated the above quote, is priceless.

Please don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about bashing those whose care I have entrusted myself with. Because I am incredibly blessed to be in the hands of people whom I consider to be the best of the best in medical care, and certainly the best for me. I’ve said this many times, but I’ll say it again, the doctors that care for us in the PH population are hands down the most brilliant and compassionate people I know, and I am grateful for them every day.

What all of this is actually about is finding the lighter moments in the times when I really want to cry. See, in the face of something as sobering as PH, you have to find the humor. It’s a defense mechanism for me, pure and simple. I also figure if I have to be put in all these compromising situations, when I’d rather be doing just about anything else, I have the right to get just a little sassy, at least in my own mind, and maybe out loud if really necessary.