This Week At Rotary - February 3, 2021
We learned about the healing power of laughter ?? at this week’s virtual meeting thanks to Gilda's Club Kentuckiana, an agency offering support to cancer patients. Read more to see the story published by The Paducah Sun.
Courtesy of The Paducah Sun Laughter can be good medicine is a “big part” of Gilda’s Club Kentuckiana’s origin and what it does to support people living with cancer. The Louisville-based nonprofit, named in memory of the late comedian Gilda Radner, has partnered with Mercy Health-Lourdes Hospital to offer more than 100 monthly programs for oncology patients through the club. It’s gone virtual in the COVID-19 pandemic and offers an array of free programs, such as support groups, classes, workshops and more. “Gilda Radner, of course, as most of you are probably aware, was the very first person hired for Saturday Night Live and one of the most wonderful comedians ever to live,” CEO/President Karen Morrison told Rotarians Wednesday. According to its website, the first Gilda’s Club was founded in 1995 in New York City by Radner’s actor husband, Gene Wilder, and others. Radner died from cancer in 1989 at age 42. There are Gilda’s Clubs throughout the country. “She believed that while cancer was the least funny thing she had ever experienced, laughter sometimes beats the alternative,” Morrison added. “So, that’s a lot of our philosophy at the Gilda’s Club.” Morrison was this week’s Rotary Club of Paducah speaker. She recounted a personal anecdote from 2002 about her daughter, Kinsey, and went over the benefits of laughter along with the Gilda’s Club’s ongoing efforts. “The doctor had said, ‘look, she probably has 5% chance of survival. She probably has four weeks to live with or without a transplant, but we have to get her on the team and get her spirits up because she is fighting against the wrong things, so why don’t you take her to Chuck E. Cheese,’ ” she said. They instead chose to go to a movie theater to watch, “Ice Age.” She said a group of people, who were wearing masks, as Kinsey’s immune system was weakened, had gone into the mall looking for “laughter.” “We seated her right in the middle, sat all around her, kind of like bodyguards trying to keep folks away from her and their germs away from her,” she said. “Somewhere about a third of the way through this movie, she laughed. She laughed out loud and we all turned around pointing and looking at each other and, right or wrong, we marked that as a turning point in her recovery process.” Morrison said her daughter grew up to graduate from Stanford University, and had a relapse in 2017, but she’s “doing well today.” In her presentation, she cited sources that indicate laughter can reduce pain, increase job performance, connect people emotionally and improve oxygen flow to the heart and brain, among other benefits. “So, what does all of this have to do with Gilda’s Club?” she asked. “Again, it’s a big part of our philosophy that laughter is good medicine and that living with cancer is not a choice. How you live with it is, so living with cancer with joy, with style, with purpose and meaning and, yes, even with laughter, (is) a big part of what we’re all about.” Gilda’s Club Kentuckiana normally does a lot of “in-person community stuff” at its clubhouse and goes to places to do things in-person, Morrison said, but it couldn’t do that anymore because of the pandemic and its restrictions. It pivoted last year to a virtual environment, offering about 125 different programs each month. “We’ve also gotten out of the box and creative with other things like delivering things to people’s homes,” she said. “Sometimes those are in conjunction with virtual program offerings and sometimes they are standalone deliveries.” Everything Gilda’s Club Kentuckiana does is free to the participants. It’s 100% funded through gifts by individual donors, corporations and foundations, Morrison said. The virtual services are now offered in Paducah, and it wants to offer in-person services once COVID-19 allows. “Community is stronger than cancer,” she said. “That’s what we believe at Gilda’s Club. We don’t provide a service, as much as we simply facilitate a process for people to come together and share their cancer journeys because there’s always somebody three months ahead of you and there’s always somebody three months behind you.” Morrison also credited COO Janet Gruenberg for being “instrumental” in working with Paducah community leaders, specifically thanking Mercy Health and Paducah Bank for their partnerships. “We’re really excited about it,” she said. “For us, Paducah’s about as far as you can go and still be in Kentucky. The idea that we can successfully offer services initially virtually, and then in-person there — we are really really excited to do that. I know we’ve also talked to a lot of folks at Baptist Health and we’re excited to work with them to provide services as well.” She wasn’t alone in that sentiment, as Jessica Toren, president of Mercy Health Foundation-Lourdes, and John Montville, executive director of the oncology services line, also voiced excitement in Wednesday’s meeting. “I believe strongly that this is an incredible program,” Montville said. “Nobody fights cancer alone, or at least they shouldn’t have to, and this really helps bring people together.”