What a disillusioned pre-med student learned from a wacky doctor's serious dream Ever since I was twelve years old, I've wanted to nurture and help
people live vibrant and healthy lives. I have always wanted to be a
physician. When I turned 21, however, I was so disenchanted with the
medical community that I passed on medicine in favor of working my way
around the world for a year. During this journey, I learned that every
interaction has the potential to change your outlook and perspective on
life.
On April 22, 1996, after I started working as a research
assistant in a VA hospital, my perspective changed: I walked into
Rodney's room frustrated, burnt out, and ready to quit. Working with
terminal and physically disabled patients had proved both physically
and emotionally exhausting. As I entered his room, Rodney picked up his
head, smiled, and greeted me with a joke.
He then leaned over
and spoke to me in a serious tone, “You know what the worst part about
this place is? It's that it is so damn lonely, depressing, and sterile.
Hospitals should make you feel good to be alive, to motivate you to get
well. ... They don't. They just suck the life right out of you!” Three
weeks later, Rodney died at the age of thirty-eight. As I pondered my
own medical future, I realized that he was right. Hospitals do tend to
drain energy and life out of people.
For over twenty years,
researchers have demonstrated the powerful effects that laughter, play,
and humor can have on healing. So why is it that hospitals across the
country aren't doing more to deliberately incorporate these lessons
into making hospitals more fun, energizing, and ultimately healthier
for patients and staff? Do medical facilities have to be “lonely,
depressing, and sterile” places?
Not according to Patch Adams,
MD, a physician and professional clown made famous by the recent film
bearing his name, which starred Robin Williams. For 27 years, Adams has
advocated the powerful effects that fun, joy, love, humor, creativity,
and community have on healing. Adams has made a name for himself in the
healing community by standing out from the crowd, challenging
traditional medical models, and promoting his radical healthcare
delivery system.
“I am building the world's first silly
hospital,” he says. “It will be a work of art that includes all the
healing arts and all healing modalities.”
Not your average physician
Last
April, I spent two days with Patch Adams during his visit to a nearby
university. The first time I saw him, he was sitting atop a table
wearing his usual fluorescent yellow and orange clown attire and
mismatched purple and green socks as he spoke to a crowd of students.
With
a miniature dinner fork earring dangling from his left ear, blue
streaks running down the middle of his long gray ponytail, and a bushy
handlebar mustache, the 6'5” Patch Adams is not your ordinary
physician. Adams, a self-certified “lunatic” whose optimism is
contagious, has been the driving force behind the Gesundheit Institute,
a nonprofit, holistic healing community located on 320 acres in
Pocohantas County, West Virginia. Once its construction is complete,
the Institute hospital will be dedicated to providing totally free
healthcare to the community at large.
Adams' history is as
interesting as his attire. As a college freshman, he committed himself
to an inpatient psychiatric hospital for depression and, from that time
on, promised himself that he would live every day full of joy, passion,
and purpose. After graduating from the Medical College of Virginia and
completing his internship year at Georgetown, he quit his residency.
“They
taught me that you shouldn't touch your patients. That you should
always distance yourself from them. What kind of system would do that?”
he asks.
Not willing to practice medicine in a system that he
deemed unhealthy and detrimental, Adams began dreaming and fantasizing
about creating his own brand of healthcare. What if a group of healers
got together to create their fantasy hospital? he wondered. What would
happen if you provided totally free service to the community and
refused to carry any malpractice insurance? What if you created a
community infused with love, humor, fun, and creativity that would
serve as a hospital?
The magic elixirs of life
Adams
started the Gesundheit Institute, literally meaning the “wellness”
institute, in 1971. For 12 years, he ran a hospital out of his house,
24 hours a day, and never charged a cent. With the help of volunteers,
he provided free care to an estimated 15,000 people during that time.
In 1983, the need for a real facility became apparent, and Adams
shifted his focus to raising money full-time to fund his dream and also
to promote health and wellness on a global scale.
“I have spoken
to doctors all over the world, and the worst illness that they or I
have ever seen is not cancer, it's not even heart disease – rather it
is the disease of loneliness. Loneliness is a medical emergency.
Happiness is a revolutionary act,” Adams says. This philosophy is the
foundation of the Gesundheit Institute.
Adams promotes his own
special prescription for good health – one that includes love, family,
exercise, humor, community, fun, faith, passion, wonder, and curiosity.
He calls them the “magic elixirs of life,” and he has been prescribing
them to patients since the early 1970s.
“If you put these
elixirs into your life, even if you are going to die in a week, you are
going to be healthy,” says Adams. “You see, healthy for me is living a
happy, vibrant, exuberant life.”
Plus, he adds, “The most
hopeful elixir in our society is community. If anything is going to
save us from extinction, it will be that because we recreate a clear
sense that our security, our love, and the forces that sustain people
in life come from the group of people who care for us.”
When he
was seeing patients, Adams' initial interviews with them usually lasted
three to four hours. “I would literally walk patients around their own
house and introduce themselves to themselves,” Adams chuckles. Spend
that much time talking, observing, and walking with someone and, Adams
notes, “You'll see their passion.”
Money, power, and medicine
Watching
Adams speak and perform today, one can't help but find his enthusiasm
contagious. Standing in front of a roomful of students, Adams reaches
into his multicolored bag, turns around, and suddenly transforms
himself from a long-haired physician into his soft, silly, and somewhat
naive clown character. It comes as no surprise that Adams leads a group
of 15 clowns to Russia every year on a goodwill mission to bring humor
into the hospitals, orphanages, and mental hospitals. This is the same
man, after all, whose repertoire includes dressing up as a gorilla and,
upon entering a foreign country, handing the customs agent a bunch of
bananas instead of a passport.
Though this wacky doctor's goal
is to build the world's first silly hospital, his mission is not to be
taken lightly. During his lecture, Adams says in a booming voice, “The
modern gods of our society are money and power. I am really offended by
the consequences of these gods on medicine. I can't think of anything
about the healing interaction that should have anything to do with
money. I don't know where that got into it.”
Instead, Adams
argues, society must think before it acts, before it builds hospitals.
“Why do we build something that no one wants to go to anyway? I am
simply suggesting we build a solution that everyone loves.”
Hang
around Patch Adams even for a few minutes, and you'll see why he has
turned some skeptics into ardent supporters. “I seduce them,” he
confides, “with my passion and exuberance for life, healing, and
people.” It is no wonder then that after this lecture, a group of about
30 people crowd around him to find out how they can help him make his
dream a reality and offer promises to volunteer on the Institute's site
in West Virginia.
I am one of them.
The world's first silly hospital
I
felt compelled to see what the hoopla surrounding Patch Adams was all
about. On a warm, sunny day this past May, after a 10-hour drive from
Buffalo, New York, I arrived at the Gesundheit Institute. Though no
hospital building exists and no patients have yet been seen, the
Institute provides wonderful opportunities for volunteers to help
prepare the land and build the community that will sustain the hospital
once it is built.
For one week, I got down and dirty and
helped plant potatoes, weed gardens, move wood, and plant new flowers
to help beautify the land. By the second day – and for the first time
in months – I felt energized and healthy. Perhaps it was the air, the
food (vegetarian), reconnecting with the land, or simply joyful service
that helped me feel better. I really don't know! Yet, there was
something about Gesundheit that seeped into my skin.
Kathy
Blomquist, the overseer of the land and coordinator of the volunteer
program, credits this energized feeling to the “Gesundheit” mindset.
According to Blomquist, Gesundheit is not just about building a
hospital, it's “about living life with passion and purpose and adopting
the attitude of joyful service.” Thus, Gesundheit is a way of life that
can be taken with you wherever you go.
The key to healing,
according to Blomquist, is taking care of oneself first and then
looking out for one other person. If we did this, Blomquist declares,
“we would have a very healthy society.”
Doctors, healers, and friends
The
320 acres of land that Adams has chosen for the location of his future
hospital encompasses rolling hills, hidden caves, several waterfalls, a
pond, treehouses, gardens, and greenery as far as the eye can see. The
surroundings certainly had a soothing and healing effect on me. This
picturesque setting promises to be the perfect backdrop for the world's
first “silly” hospital.
Take a moment and imagine a hospital
that looks like Willy Wonka and Monty Python drew up the architectural
plans. From the outside in, the hospital will stupefy and amuse the
soul. Various parts of the buildings will be designed with the body in
mind. A giant ear will stick off one end of the building, a huge eye
will sit in the center, and giant feet will mark the entrance to the
hospital. Below the main floors of the hospital, water passageways will
allow people to travel from one end of the hospital to the other via
paddle boat. Inside, beautiful murals will cover the walls, toys will
line the floors, and secret doorways and slides will provide added
mystique and amusement. Indeed, this hospital will be the wackiest,
strangest, and funniest place people have ever gone to heal. But
standing in the way of Adams' dream is $20 million.
During the
last 27 years, Gesundheit has survived solely on donations, mostly of
the $5 and $10 variety from the public and from Patch's speaking fees.
Adams admits that it is hard to get large donations because of his
refusal to carry malpractice insurance. To him, this policy is not
negotiable. “I'd rather give up the hospital then carry malpractice
insurance. I won't mistrust my patients.”
But the money may
finally be around the corner. Adams anticipates that the publicity from
the film based on his life will help with the fundraising effort.
More than just science
As
a future physician, I feel lucky to have spent time with Patch Adams. I
have learned that healing is much more than just science. It's also
about having passion and purpose. This knowledge will make me a better
doctor, healer, and friend.
As a result of my involvement with
Gesundheit, my perspective on life has once again changed. Previously,
I viewed medicine as being too serious and limiting. Now I realize that
I do not have to divorce who I am from what I do. Rather, by
acknowledging my playful, humorous side and bringing all of myself to
medicine, I will communicate better with my patients, and I ultimately
will be a happier and more effective physician. I owe this realization
to Gesundheit.
During one of my last conversations with Adams,
he told me, “We're not the answer. We are just one alternative.
Gesundheit is meant to be a stimulant and an irritant. I hope it's a
stimulus for you to ask yourself and your community, ‘What is your
fantasy hospital? What are your dreams?'”
For more
information on the Gesundheit Institute, please contact: Patch Adams,
MD, Gesundheit Institute, 6855 Washington Blvd., Arlington, VA 22213,
703/525-8169, or volunteer coordinator Kathy Blomquist, Gesundheit
Institute, HC 64, Box 167, Hillsboro, WV 24946, 304/653-4338.
Russell Schoen graduated
with a M.S. degree in Creativity and Innovation from Buffalo State
College last year and will begin medical school this fall at the
University of Buffalo. He can be reached at 773/549-9058; E-mail:
Schoen85@hotmail.com.
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