Comic Thinks Illness Is a Laughing Matter : Healing: She is a successful joke writer who finds fulfillment in helping chronic pain sufferers. Her newsletter aims to make positive thinking their best medicine.
Comedy was Karen Silver’s only means of escape from the painful memories of a troubled childhood. Within just a few short years after enrolling in a 1978 comedy workshop at Cal State Northridge, she had joined the ranks of what she calls “advanced beginners,” even contributing jokes to the routines of frequent guest-host Joan Rivers on “The Tonight Show.”
But not even this unexpected early success in comedy writing matched the emotional satisfaction of this Northridge housewife’s impromptu comedy performance in the hospital room of a bowling league friend stricken with cancer last year. For a few brief moments, at least, the pain of Barbara Karpel’s breast cancer actually seemed to disappear into a cloud of lighthearted laughter.
“When I saw how she responded, I could see she really loved it,” Silver said.
Karpel died in March, 1989, but the sense that Silver had actually helped diminish her pain, even momentarily, overshadowed any rewards offered by a comedy-writing career. Comic relief for those in physical and mental pain became her primary goal, inspired in part by the philosophy set forth in author Norman Cousins’ “Anatomy of an Illness,” the 1979 book that stressed the value of laughter and other positive emotions in the healing process.
The result is Silver’s home-grown Laughter Prescription Newsletter, a six-page monthly collection of jokes, commentary and advice designed for sufferers of chronic pain and the medical professionals who treat them. Since last September, Silver, 41, has written the newsletter on a home computer, supporting its $100 monthly expenses with a $500 donation from her accountant husband and a $5,000 inheritance from her mother, who died in January.
Presently, the Laughter Prescription Newsletter has fewer than 50 paid subscribers. Silver mails an additional 200 free copies to health centers in search of more paid readers, but mainly in the hope that her jokes and information will reach anyone who might benefit from them.
“For me, it’s just that humor is healing. If it wasn’t for my sense of humor, I think I would have really gone off the deep end,” she said. “It’s the wellspring that gave me life.”
It hasn’t always been easy for Silver to laugh through life’s obstacles. Not even the sharp humor of her father could hide his own alcoholism, her mother’s debilitating manic-depression and the continuous mental, physical and sexual abuse young Karen and her sisters suffered before she escaped at age 18.
Comedy had always played a large role in her life, she said, and she grew up listening to her father’s comedy records and watching “The Tonight Show.” By high school, Silver had developed a sarcasm that reflected the bitterness of her home life and her father’s sometimes crushing wisecracks. “If brains were TNT,” her father might typically remark, “you wouldn’t have enough to blow your nose.”
It wasn’t until a 1978 miscarriage that she finally turned to comedy as a way of escape from the traumas of her earlier life. After the CSUN comedy class, where she earned some unexpected laughs, Silver was able to release the ghosts that haunted her from childhood which even years of therapy couldn’t quite banish.
“Why did I go through the pain?” she asked herself during an interview at her home. “So I could come out the other side and use whatever gift I have to help other people. And that’s why I believe in a gentle, positive kind of comedy.”
In a nearby room of her house, Silver’s 16-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter could be heard laughing at “Popeye” cartoons on TV. But except for a book by Joan Rivers resting on the table in front of her, placed there for the benefit of a photographer, there was little in the wide, one-story home that spoke of her focus on comedy these last 12 years. Instead, Silver’s collection of American Indian dolls and other handiwork decorated the living room’s cabinets and shelves.
The computer at which Silver spends hours every month quickly but carefully typing in jokes and words of advice rested quietly in the den. In the 10 months since beginning the newsletter project, Silver said, it has already evolved in several significant ways. It began as just four pages of lighthearted jokes, but has expanded to include articles, letters, a message from the editor, and lengthy contributions from others. She said she plans to add a children’s page soon.
Author Norman Cousins has spent much of the last two decades studying the effects of emotions on illness. His controversial “Anatomy of an Illness” documented his recovery in the mid-1960s from a rare and otherwise incurable degenerative illness with the aid of comedy-induced belly laughter.
An adjunct professor at the UCLA School of Medicine since 1978, Cousins spends much of his time lecturing, talking to patients and writing of the virtues of positive emotions. In 1988, he joined Monty Python member John Cleese in a public discussion of this philosophy at UCLA, which ended in a small tornado of one-liners, slapstick and twisted facial expressions after audience member Dudley Moore climbed on stage.
Cousins said he had not seen the Laughter Prescription Newsletter, but was quick to praise the idea behind it.
“The big challenge in a hospital is to make it as unlike a hospital as possible,” Cousins said. “To the extent that you can change the atmosphere, to the extent that you can reduce the panic, the foreboding and the depression that tends to go along with illness, you’re positioning the patient for a good experience with the doctor.
“That is scientifically verifiable,” he added. “They discovered that laughter triggers the production of endorphins, which is the body’s own pain-killing substance. It has morphine-like molecules.”
Silver said that the whole experience of being stuck in a hospital room lends itself to a specific brand of gallows humor.
“Until you’ve been in the hospital and tried on those gowns that don’t meet in the back or the front, or had a bedpan shoved under you, gone through childbirth, gone through prepping and shaving, you don’t realize how important it is to maintain that sense of self,” Silver said. “And humor helps to do all those things.”
Still, much of the newsletter’s comedy material has little to do directly with health issues, and instead focuses more on silly asides on the modern world. “I tried fasting to avoid unsafe foods,” Silver wrote in an early issue, “but my drinking water made me sick.”
“I’d like it to be there not only for people that are sick, but for the doctors and nurses who are under a lot of stress,” Silver said.
She said she is hoping that sales to doctors who want it available to their patients will ultimately subsidize the publication for those who couldn’t otherwise afford it. The newsletter’s basic annual subscription rate is $18, or $38 for up to five copies per month. She gave one hospital, Ball Memorial in Muncie, Ind., permission to photocopy as many copies as needed. Other local hospitals have recently expressed some interest in subscribing, Silver said.
“If my newsletter’s doing the right job, it needs to be given away,” Silver insisted. “I know I’m doing the right thing. And it’s only a matter of time before other people are doing it too. I welcome the competition.”
Silver’s efforts were clearly appreciated by her peers at the July convention of subscribers to Gene Perret’s Round Table Newsletter, the monthly publication started by the veteran television producer and comedy writer for Bob Hope, Carol Burnett and others. The Palm Springs gathering named Silver the 1990 Round Table Woman of the Year.
Even if much of her time is spent taking care of her family and working at the computer, Silver said she still harbors some dreams of performing stand-up comedy professionally. And she still takes comedy classes regularly to keep up. “I’m going to fax Jay Leno some jokes if I can get up the courage.”
But she said she isn’t likely to pursue it with the aggressive ambition often required in the entertainment business.
Besides, she said, “I don’t think the world needs any more entertainers. And I think I’ve had audiences that didn’t perceive me as an entertainer. But in humor and health I can really make more of a difference.”
Laughs for the Pain
Excerpts from Karen Silver’s Laughter Prescription Newsletter:
“Mothers learn to count their blessings. Every Labor Day I give thanks for LaMaze training.”
“If it’s true you are what you eat, then I’m a chemistry set.”
“An Alaska-born storm scattered well over an inch of rain across the Los Angeles basin, spotting the mountains with dormant oil.”
“Movies should be rated by the gun control lobby: G-guns, PG-plenty of guns, PG-13--over a dozen guns, R-rifles, and X--extra firepower.”
“I feel safer with products listing their ingredients. I would feel better if my bagged apples didn’t have the poison control number listed.”
Subscription information: Laughter Prescription Newsletter, 17337 Septo St., Northridge 91325.
