Hospital’s Rx: Floppy Feet, Big Nose, Belly Laughs

Go ahead and laugh at Beverly Toelle. Really. Nothing would make her happier.

“Stress and humor can’t coexist,” Beverly says, slipping a pair of ridiculously large glasses onto her face.

Beverly, 44, is so sold on humor that she’s gathering a corps of clowns for Kootenai Medical Center. She wants giggling in oncology and chuckling in rehab, guffawing in dialysis and howling in pediatrics.

She’s not laughing at poor health, but depending on humor to improve health. As a registered nurse, she learned years ago that laughter distracts patients from their pain.

That lesson hit home for her last year after three close family members died within 11 months. She needed relief from grief. Clowns always made her smile.

“No one actually questions the healing power of humor,” she says. “But selling the idea of clowns in a hospital is a little harder.”

Actor Mandy Patinkin, as Dr. Jeffrey Geiger, thrust the clowns-in-hospitals idea before the public on an episode of “Chicago Hope.” His greasepaint and large nose prompted a co-worker to tell him that clowns don’t belong in hospitals.

Geiger simply replied, “Neither do children.”

Beverly uses a clip of the show to sell the reluctant on her program.

Kootenai Medical Center resisted Beverly’s clown corps at first until she shared a detailed training plan. She’d developed the clown course with Burlin Conner, a Spokane mental health counselor and clown.

Their 10-week course covers clowning, falls, skits and makeup, but also how to use humor as therapy, work with difficult people and listen. Hospitals aren’t the Big Top.

“Clowns should divert patients’ attention from why they’re in the hospital,” Beverly says. “So we teach them not to ask, ‘How are you?”’

Beverly plans to join the class Burlin will teach. She says people who exaggerate their idiosyncracies make the best clowns. She can feel her character emerging - an ultra-organizer consumed by details.

“I’ll be a good clown, but other people will be better,” she says. “I’m the one who’s always seeing more possibilities.”

Starting Sept. 9, “KMC” will take on new meaning - Kootenai Mirth Corps. To start, Beverly will open the program only to adult volunteers.

The training will cost $60, which will pay for the colorful textbook. Beverly expects graduates to spend at least 40 hours a year raising chuckles among Kootenai Medical Center’s staff and patients.

“I know there’ll be people who won’t laugh,” she says. Clowns will visit only patients who ask for them. “But some patients don’t need a belly laugh, just a diversion.”

To register for KMC’s Clown College, call 666-2510 or 666-2002. Friday is the deadline.

Star struck

Thanks, John Travolta. You’ve given my college-bound daughter, Lindsay, a reason to return home next summer.

Lindsay managed concessions for the Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre this summer to raise money for her first year in college in Washington, D.C. She’s so enamored with our nation’s capital that she warned her father and me she may stay there next summer to work.

But the story changed 12 days ago after John Travolta appeared at the theater to watch his niece in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

Lindsay caught sight of the actor in the lobby after intermission and, forgetting her pledge to remain cool, stared in awe. He smiled and waved to her, then autographed her program after the show. She beamed for days.

Now she says she’s coming home next summer because she knows he’ll be back. So, thanks John, for giving her an irresistible reason for returning to us.

What keeps you in North Idaho? Explain your attachment to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID, 83814; FAX to 765-7149; call 765-7128; or e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo