Treating the funny bone: Dr. Patch Adams visits with local students in Kenmore

Published 12:17 pm Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Patch Adams engaged students at Bastyr University with funny delights, sad stories and fake boogers in his nose.

The internationally known health care professional, best known for the movie starring Robin Williams that bears his name, addressed the college’s Center for Mind, Body, Spirit and Nature about “medicine for fun not funds” on April 4.

“I went on the road 30 years ago because I failed at raising funds for a hospital,” said Adams, who is in his 45th year of fundraising. “I entered medical school in 1967 to use medicine as a vehicle for social change, I’m a political activist. I knew that medicine was a greedy business, so I entered medical school because I knew I was going to be free.”

During his free time in medical school, he studied health care delivery systems from around the world and throughout history. He had intended to create a care delivery model with a plan to provide care out of his own communal household with 20 adults and children.

For 12 years, he and fellow caregivers, both medical professionals and caring individuals, ensured that anyone who wanted care got it for free without ever aligning with medical insurance or having malpractice insurance.

Since it was his hospital, he could do anything he wanted to do.

“My initial interview with a patient is four hours long, unbelievably intense,” Adams said. “I ask every question sensitive to life, you cannot imagine a personal question I didn’t ask the [patient], no matter how private it was. My first question was ‘tell me about yourself.’”

Even though patients had hours, according to Adams, they only spoke about themselves for about five minutes. He found 3 percent of the people had self esteem and less than 5 percent understood day-to-day happiness.

During his talk, Adams pleaded with those in the audience who are students to not keep patients in a sterile, arms length, doctor-patient relationship and, instead, create compassionate doctor-patient relationships full of trust and understanding.

“I read one of the first books that Patch published well over 20 years ago, and was inspired by his vision,” said Brenda Loew, clinical supervisor at Bastyr. “We became close, close friends over the years and have remained in touch and see each other when we can. His vision is completely resonant of healing with joy in life.”

Even though Adams hasn’t been a practitioner of medicine for several years, he still practices the art of medicinal clowning by taking scores of people across the globe to raise spirits with clowning. The Gesundheit Global Outreach program hopes to develop physically and mentally healthy communities and people by sending humanitarian clowns into places such as war zones, death row prisoners, hospitals and even to Darfur during the height of the conflict.

“In 1985, we started our first clown trip. So I started our first clown trip to the Soviet Union, and this will be our 31st year. What we’ve done for 31 years, is 10 hours a day of clowning. We’ve done hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes, prisons, institutions, subways, restaurants, hotels – nobody is safe. We’ve taken ages 3 to 88 to 50 countries,” Patch said. “We don’t require any training, you can be the most boring person from your country and in a clown costume that becomes a character of a really boring person. It sucks you in because we take you to such suffering that you can’t hold back your goodness. And it works.”

According to Patch, he took clowns to Sri Lanka after the Tsunami, Haiti post earthquake, five clowning trips into the thick of war, and on more than 150 clown trips.

*While on these clowning trips, Patch estimates he’s been a clown at 10,000 deathbeds and held the arms of at least 2,000 people the day they died of starvation. In Peru, found four children between the age of 3 and 5 with gonorrhea, who were child sex slaves, and started a lifetime project in Peru for children.*

Participants of the event not only heard Adams speak, but also watched a short video featuring a patient in South America who was about to undergo another open-heart surgery. The patient and his mother were afraid, so Adams cheered them up with clowning. The universal understanding of a mother’s love for her son and a son’s love for his mother showed through and, by the end, there weren’t many dry eyes in the auditorium.

When asked how it feels to have impacted so many people around the globe, Adams answered with “Well, duh.”

“If it didn’t have that impact, I would try something else, right? I want a different world. I’m here to infect minds that love is seductive, fun is seductive, service is seductive,” Adams said. “I’ve worked every single day for 44 plus years to get a hospital and I’ve never had any discouragement.”

Gesundheit program isn’t just about ensuring people receive happy healthcare, but also about healthy education and housing. According to Adams, there are no educational institutions teaching love or compassion, whether in health care or primary education. A fact that Adams hopes to change by promoting the School for Designing a Society, which aims to help change society for the better by making it more human.

“I want to be somebody that everybody feels comfortable around, I enjoy being goofy,… I want to do good for the world and make people happier and make it a pleasure to exist in the world we live in,” said Corinna Cook, a student of the school. “I think the world can definitely benefit from this and I certainly hope that the amount of people who realize this option is out there will increase in the near future so that a lot more of this change can happen sooner.”

While Adams was only at Bastyr for a few hours, he said citizens can help positively effect change in their own communities all year round. For more information about the Gesundheit! Institute and Adams’ work with Clowning, please visit www.patchadams.org.

“One option in life is to be exactly who you decide to be, and you will really like living that life because you can change at any time. If at that day, you are exactly who you decide to be, you’ll like the sleep you get,” Adams said. “Anyone can be exactly who they decide to be every single second for the rest of your life and you’ll really like what happens, and you’ll get really skilled at the person you want to be because you are that all the time.”

Adams receives letters every day from all around the world, over 10,000 letters. To correspond with Adams, he replies to every letter sent to him and requires only one thing: “it be in English or American.”

World renowned Dr. Patch Adams speaks to a standing-room only crowd at Bastyr Unviersity in Kenmore on April 4. Deanna Isaacs, Bothell/Kenmore Reporter