Cancer Survivor Saranne Rothberg Laughs for a Cure
By Rhoda Amon, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.
Apr. 6–So why do seagulls live by the sea?
Answer: Because if they lived by the bay, they would be called “bay-gulls.”
Not funny, you say.
That may be because Saranne Rothberg has not yet tickled your funny bone. “Our funny bones get broken,” she says with sadness. And then she adds, brightening, “But they can be repaired.”
Rothberg, convinced that laughter is the best medicine, makes her living bringing mirth to unlikely places. She administered a dose last week to the stressed staff of Schneider Children’s Hospital in New Hyde Park, who deal with sick or injured children all day. It worked. She had the nurses in stitches. Some doubled over, even from a TV cameraman’s sick joke.
Her point was this: “Children laugh 300 to 400 times a day. Adults laugh only 10 to 20 times a day.”
Between being a carefree child and a mortgage-paying adult, however, there can be a world of misery: job losses, divorce, doctor bills, foreclosures, bad in-laws, ungrateful children, to name a few.
Rothberg’s advice: “Bring your laugh total up to at least 100 a day.”
Her therapeutic humor workshop was held in the teaching center of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center. (Both hospitals are part of the North Shore LIJ Health System.)
It was sponsored by the Nassau Region of Hadassah as part of its “Let the Sunshine In” health campaign.
The serious side of the merriment session was to promote the staff’s “emotional well-being” by giving everyone a good belly laugh lunch, according to Frieda Rosenberg of Merrick, president of the 15,000-member region of the national women’s Zionist organization, which has 300,000 members. Hadassah, founded in 1912 and not usually regarded as funny, supports two hospitals and a college in Israel and also sponsors social and health education programs in this country, members said. Nassau Region will honor Rothberg for her contribution to its yearlong well-being campaign, Tuesday at a luncheon at the Carltun on the Park in Eisenhower Park.
Rothberg, divorced and the mother of a 15-year-old with chronic health issues, was diagnosed with breast cancer nine years ago. She founded ComedyCures, a nonprofit organization, to spread “joy, hope and laughter” throughout the world, she said. At 44, Rothberg looks no more than 36. “Laughing makes you look eight years younger,” she explains with her arsenal of laugh statistics from various sources.
Named in talk show host Oprah Winfrey’s 2005 anthology as being among the top 100 people leading inspirational lives, the humor consultant has been called in on occasions that were nothing to laugh about. Rothberg has performed for responders at Ground Zero after 9/11, for returning Iraq War veterans and bombing victims from Israel. More recently, she was enlisted in United Nations’ efforts to end violence against women.
At last week’s hospital session she had help from magician Bob Infantino of Central Islip, who had some of the nurses spinning plates on sticks to the cheers of their colleagues.
With the audience warmed up, Broadway comedian Rick Younger had no trouble drawing hilarious laughter just by telling how he fell in the shower while trying to wash his feet. “I really did fall in the shower,” he said when the merriment subsided. He then proceeded to “do what I am the only person in the world about to do: sing ‘We Are The World,’ all by myself.”
“It was a nice break from the norm — to just have fun,” said Ronit Schwartz, a nurse educator who was among the heartiest laughers.
Fran Mannino, a child-life specialist, said the staff now had more ammunition to distract young patients in the emergency room.
“We blow bubbles — bubbles always make them laugh.”
Want to laugh? Call 888-ha-ha-ha-ha (888-424-2424).
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