Healing Through Humor Hospital Stays Aren’t Usually Chock-Full Of Fun, But Sacred Heart Patients Are Getting Some Laughs
One of Spokane’s longest running television shows is one most people would rather skip - even though the host, a non-stop comedian, gives away dozens of prizes each week.
If you’ve missed “Bingo Ring” it’s probably because you haven’t been a patient at Sacred Heart Medical Center, where the in-house program has aired for almost 20 years.
“Bingo Ring” is part of Sacred Heart’s Humor Care Program, a comprehensive approach to healing through humor which celebrates its third year this month.
Can titters, belly laughs and guffaws knit broken bones quicker or seal incisions sooner? The evidence isn’t conclusive, but laughter seems to release stress and tension and lift the spirit when the body is down.
But medical research suggests what your mother always knew: Laughter is the best medicine. To wit: Humor doesn’t require Food and Drug Administration approval. It can be taken on an empty stomach and it doesn’t cause drowsiness.
Sacred Heart patients are encouraged to participate in humor therapy, which can mean anything from playing “Bingo Ring” to a prescription for a visit from one of five therapy dogs.
The person who coordinates dogs, volunteers and bingo prizes and ensures the laughs get delivered is Marcia Rodgers, chair of the Humor Care Volunteer Program.
Rodgers, a South Hill resident and part-time volunteer, also hosts “Bingo Ring.”
The tall, silver-haired emcee - a cross between Florence Nightingale and Vanna White - distributes bingo cards to patients before the show and dispenses prizes afterwards.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, Rodgers typically distributes 150 or more bingo cards. At 2 p.m., patients hit the remote, tuning their TVs to channel 5. For the next 30 minutes, Rodgers, in a black sequin vest and top hat, calls numbers, congratulates winners and cracks jokes.
“I feel 18,” says Rodgers, plucking a numbered pingpong ball from a wire tumbler.
“I’m sure I look like it, too. Well, a lot of 18s put together.”
“OK, back to business,” she says. “N-45, I-21.”
The phone rings on the tiny set. Rodgers picks it up.
“Bingo Ring,” she answers. There’s a pause while the patient on the other end of the line calls back his numbers.
“We have a winner!” says Rodgers, beaming at the camera.
And Jack, a pet-therapy dog, howls a hearty congratulations on cue.
Tom Wakely, Sacred Heart’s television specialist, keeps the cameras rolling.
Sacred Heart assembled the TV studio in the late 1970s, “mainly for educational purposes,” Wakely said.
“I run the equipment and let them do all the crazy things they want to do in the half-hour,” he said.
“Marcia is quite a character, and I think she makes the show fun for the patients, and they tell lots of jokes and keep it lighthearted,” Wakely said.
“It’s popular; 100 to 160 patients play on any given show. That’s quite a percentage of the patient population.”
Bingo prizes are small - a book of crossword puzzles, an angel pin, a magazine, a mystery novel - but patients adore them. And Rodgers.
They sit up in bed when she arrives at their doorways with a basket of prizes. They straighten their gowns. Adjust their casts. Grin.
After leaving a job in advertising, Rodgers went in search of something that would allow her to make the world a better place, a happier place, she said.
Sacred Heart was her first stop.
Interviewing with the director of volunteer services, Rodgers told her, “‘If you have what makes my heart sing, I’m yours. If you don’t, I’m gone.’ She looked at me kind of stunned,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers became a volunteer in May 1993. Almost a year passed before the the Humor Care Program was up and running.
In the meantime, Rodgers volunteered in various capacities.
“I met people and learned the hospital,” she said.
Rodgers wanted to become a member of the “Beam Team,” another branch of the Humor Care Program. Volunteers visit patients, listen, converse and cheer them up.
“It never occurred to me to be the chair, but it was a perfect match. It encompassed my own personal philosophy,” Rodgers said.
“Illness is directly related to how the person is internally. When I heal the inside, the outside can heal too.”
The Humor Care Program is composed entirely of volunteers - 30 of them. Their goal is to make patients laugh at the drop of a syringe.
The program is funded by individual and corporate donors and service league proceeds from the gift shop - and fueled by volunteers.
“The volunteers are a fun-loving, very caring group,” Rodgers said. “They are in their own way healers.”
In addition to providing Bingo Ring and the Beam Team, the program also includes a three-tier “humor cart,” which may be the hospital’s most welcome transport.
Volunteers stock it with books, magazines and puzzles, steering it onto elevators, through hallways, into patient rooms.
“I get rid of a lot of stuffed animals. A lot of older women love them,” said Phillip Shadden, a volunteer.
At night, Shadden drives a semitruck from Spokane to Umatilla, Ore. But once a week he guides the humor cart from floor to floor, through orthopedics, plastic surgery, general surgery and nephrology.
“Some of the rooms you go to … people are scared,” Shadden said. “They just want somebody to come see them.”
The Humor Care Program pulls in volunteers from colleges, retired people and working people, as well as five dogs - Athena, Jack, Eddie, Joybell and Jenna, and their handlers. The dogs, which also visit other area hospitals, are required to wear photo identification on their collars like any other certified health professional.
“The dogs get patients talking,” said Val Ellingson, owner of Jack, a 10-year-old golden labrador.
But before Jack, the most senior therapy dog, can visit patients, Ellingson bathes and disinfects him. She clips and buffs his nails until they’re as smooth as marble.
If a patient requests it, Jack will carefully climb onto the bed.
On a typical day Jack will visit patients in oncology, pediatrics and adult and child psychiatric care.
A few years ago, a nurse approached Ellingson about visiting a young motorcycle accident victim. Normally even Jack wouldn’t be allowed to visit such an ill patient.
“We went into his room, and you couldn’t even see that he was a human,” Ellingson said. “He was hooked up to all these contraptions, more like a machine than a man.
“Jack climbed onto the bed, slowly weaving his way toward the man’s face, never disrupting one hanging thing.
“The next time we came back the man was up in the chair,” Ellingson said.
The patient had asked a nurse to send out for a hamburger and fries. He saved the fries.
“He fed Jack from his mouth,” Ellingson said. “The only thing he could move - his mouth.”
The story brings a plaintive smile to Ellingson’s and Rodgers’ faces.
That experience and hundreds of others have given Rodgers what she needed and wanted - to make her heart sing with the touch of humanity, with laughter.
“Illness is a time for good distraction,” she said.”It isn’t the time to examine all your baggage. It’s time to watch funny movies and play bingo … laugh at this wild woman.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo