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COMMUNITYNEWSPAPERS.COM
February 9 - 15, 2010
Healthy dose of laughter helped save author’s life BY TONYA STEWART
When London-based cancer sufferer Kit Hammond Stapely was told there was nothing more doctors could do for her, she realized that only a miracle could save her. That miracle came in the form of a new treatment — specially flown in from the U.S. — and a vital factor was the healing power of an “inappropriate sense of humor.” Kit not only recovered from her tussle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma — against all the specialists’ odds — but she trained as a “Laughter Leader” and Health Creation mentor, and now is helping others through “the black hole of a cancer diagnosis” and treatment by learning, among other things, to laugh at life. So, to what does Kit attribute this remarkable turnaround? “It was the sense of humour that got me into trouble all my life that played a big part in getting me out of trouble on my cancer journey,” she said. “If I couldn’t have laughed, I wouldn’t have survived.” And it was quite a journey. By1998 Kit had been through six years “overhung by the dreadful sword of Damocles,” following a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in
1992. During the next six years she had had the legal limit of every available chemotherapy drug but two; lost her hair five times from the treatment, several sets of lines in her chest, and her husband, who had given up all hope of her recovery, had lined up her replacement. In January 1998, a year after a gruelling stem cell transplant, Kit was told there was little more that doctors could do for her. Shortly afterwards upsurge of anger swept through her and she decided she didn’t want to go. “I wanted a miracle and I started working towards this goal,” she said. That miracle came in the form of Rituximab, a drug that her oncologist referred to as, “the magic bullet we’ve all been searching for because it targets only the cancer cell.” And guess what? The cancer cell they’d figured out how to target first was Kit’s own CD 19/ CD 20 cells (non-Hodkin’s lymphoma comes in many different forms). “I told you I’d get a miracle,” Kit winked at her oncologist, to which he replied, “It does seem a little like the U.S. Cavalry riding to the rescue at the very last moment.” “When life gives you lemons, make
FOOTNOTES
Kit Hammond Stapely –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– lemonade and have a party, is the philosophy that’s always worked for me,” Kit said. “I decided that if I couldn’t laugh, I’d have cried — and I’m not so sure I could have stopped.” This sense of humour helped her on a number of occasions. On a trip to London (when she was first diagnosed, she lived in New York) an old friend asked her, “How are you, Kit?” “Oh fine, really,” she replied, grasping the nettle firmly, “considering I’ve been told I have incurable cancer!” “There was a long silence as she digested my words,” Kit said. “She’s one of those people who spring back from everything
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like a bop-bag and this line, delivered with some panache, actually made her pause, but not for long. ‘Oh well, never mind. At least you know what you’re going to die of,’ she said. When I recovered from the shock I found that pretty funny.” And when her trademark shining mane of hair was lost through chemotherapy, Kit decided “to have fun with the hair loss. This was surprisingly easy, once I had made up my mind. A friend owned a wig catalogue company and gave me carte blanche. I stopped collecting at nine.” One of the wigs was long and blonde, (Kit affectionately named it “Helga”). “The wonderful thing about being bald is that you can have whatever hair you like. I’d always wanted long, straight, platinum blonde hair, so guess which wig was first on my list? I still encounter male friends who enquire wistfully after it.” Kit looks back on this period with fond nostalgia, “which is strange considering how ill I was and how often.” So it wasn’t surprising that Kit, who had herself gained so much hope through her laughter during her cancer experience, decided to train with Dr. Madan Kataria as a Laughter Yoga Leader (joining the ranks of the thousands of similarly trained laughter leaders worldwide — more than 90 in Florida alone). She now works as a Cancer Laughter and Wellbeing Guide and runs “Laughter Playshops” to help people who want to develop the healing powers of laughter and play in their own lives. “Laughter acts like the valve in the pressure cooker of stress,” Kit said. “If you can laugh at anything — I don’t care how serious it is — then you can survive it.” Kit will be talking about the benefits of laughter and signing copies of her book, It Could Be Verse: An Anthology of Laughter Quotations, at Books & Books in Coral Gables, 265 Aragon Ave., on Feb. 16. Designed to appeal to those facing stressful life situations, the book contains quotes from both famous and infamous people taken from the past 2,000 years.
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