How Toys Help Us Cope With Cancer

Hey there lifter uppers. I'm Deb Krier, the co-host of Cancer and Comedy where our mission is to heal cancer impacted people through hope and humor, something we like to call turning the grim into a grin. Well, today on Cancer and Comedy, we're going to talk about the power of toys and play in coping with cancer. So now here's the host of Cancer and Comedy podcast, Dr Brad Miller.

Hey, Deb, always a joy and a privilege to be with you and our lifter uppers as we talk about some pretty serious matters, cancer and other things which are traumatic in our lives, and we'd like to take an approach which is sometimes called therapeutic humor and other aspects of life, which include how we approach things with a shift of mindset. And we like to call this shift of mindset, moving from the grandma to the grin that is living your life to the fullest. Kind of living your life to the maximum no matter what your circumstances are.

That means even have a have an attitude that has a bit of cheer in it regardless of your circumstances. And we'd like to do that by building a community here in cancer and comedy. And we just encourage people to do just that by going over to our website, cancer and comedy.com/follow, be part of our community, and you can be in contact with myself and Deb, who has her own, her own Cancer Coping coaching program, and will look to be helpful to you and some way or another, know that we can do it. We've had a lot of fun with some of our followers. In the past, we invited people to connect up with it's a cancerandcomedy.com/follow but hey, Deb, we got a couple dad jokes for you. Are you ready?

What do you call? Oh, I cannot wait. All right.

All right, good, good, good. Well, hey, I What are, what do you call two birds stuck together? I don't know, Velcro’s. Velcro’s, cute. Just one more. How are false teeth? Like stars, they only come out at night. They only come out at night.

Cute. You know, I feel like I need a rim shot. Yeah,

I may have to find that in the some sort of a sound thing.

I know we need to add that. So following our conversation, you are going to want to stick around because, yep, folks, we've got another one of Dr Brad's bad jokes of the day. But then, of course, we have our very important face It or Break It segment. Well, we would love for you to be part of our cancer and comedy community, where together we crush cancer with a message of how to cope with hope and humor. Please follow Cancer and Comedy at cancerandcomedy.com/follow.

Well, Deb, today, let's just have some fun. We're talking about toys and playtime and how it may relate to coping with cancer. So let's just start off this way. I want to hear about a toy or something you had might be meaningful you as a child growing up, and then maybe another toy or play thing or play time that may be important to you now, how about it?

What, you know, I and then I want to hear about yours. Sure. I was always a big fan of stuffed animals, you know, I was not a Barbie person or anything like that, but I had lots and lots of stuffed animals, ranging from, you know, some, some ones that were bigger than me to, you know, some smaller ones. And it would be something that I would buy when I was traveling. So, you know, maybe it had a special moment, you know, thought tied with it on a vacation.

But it was interesting when I, you know, was first diagnosed and got so sick, I was in the hospital for about seven weeks, and two people sent me the little stuffed animals, you know, one was a little dog and another one was a little pig, and, you know, and these were from family members. And the first thing that I thought of was, wow, when they're with Miss, when they're with me, I'm not alone, right? So it was kind of like it was their presence that was there.

And then I do have to admit, I would use them when whoever was with me, because somebody was usually with me, whether it was my mom or Tom or a friend, they'd fall asleep. And then I couldn't wake them up. Those little stuffed animals would get chucked at them. Wake up, wake up. But, yeah, I mean, it was, it really was to me. It helped me to know I was not alone, and that somebody had thought of me by sending me those stuffed toys.

That is cool. Well, for me, and I thought about this topic of toys and playtime, this basic topic here we're like, we're growing up, and now they have some relationship. And when I was growing up, my thing I loved when I was relatively young, six years old to about 16, was my bicycle. I had several over the course of that time. But I just love the tool around the neighborhood and go back into. To, you know, got me around to my friends houses and things like that. And there was a certain road that went on they had a big hill on it. So I would huff and puff up the hill, but I love going down the hill real fast.

At one time, had a big Wipeout wreck. I remember from messed up my bike. I had a bunch of wrecks in the course of my bicycle career, including in my adult life. I've done a couple of longer bicycle rides. It had a kind of about 10 years ago, had kind of a bad bike right then too, which kind of curtailed my bike riding a little bit. But I've always enjoyed my riding my bike and that type of thing. And these days, traffic kind of keeps me a little bit curtailed in that, because it's a little bit crazy that way.

But I've always enjoyed that. And then the thing that's reminded me here recently, in terms of my cancer situation, is that my I've always had a habit of enjoying toys of some sort, and often would buy myself a toy for my birthday or whatever, you know, something small or whatever. But when I got out of the hospital a couple years ago, after my surgery, my daughter and granddaughters gave me a balloon with a pokey man theme on it, and I still keep it right behind me. Right? You might be some people say there's my Pokémon balloon back there. They got me a great big one, one of those big mylar ones, and I keep a small that that didn't last forever, but I got a mylar one that I keep just behind me all the time. Remind me of that.

And ever since then, my granddaughters and my daughter and all three of my kids really have kept me a little toys once in a while, even for Father's Day. Just a few weeks ago, they got my granddaughters and daughter got me a little game. It's called a Marble Mountain. And you put marbles, marbles through it. It runs through it. And I like dumb stuff like that. And then then I often have, you know, have, but the other kind of theme that I had was, uh, cars and trucks and airplanes, toy airplanes, you know, gliders and all kinds of stuff like that. I've always liked that kind of thing.

So I enjoyed that. But so I enjoyed that. That just made me feel good. Makes you feel a little bit like a kid again, that kind of stuff, right? And it just gives me a little bit of a high level of a buzz to get a toy. And I keep, I keep several toys around my office area, my home office area here the I mentioned the balloon. I have a, like a, like a little toy car, a kind of a matchbook car that I have here.

And then I have a rubber chicken. Oh yeah, you got your rubber chicken. Rubber chicken that my granddaughters gave me, and they've actually given a rubber chicken to my wife, and we got about four or five rubber chickens around here. I'm not sure how we got the rubber chicken theme around here, but so, so be it that they love it when my granddaughters come to visit, they all, where is the chickens? Grandpa? Okay, well, here, oh yeah, but we have fun with I noticed how some comedians and some people who have a theme, a kind of a toy theme in life, like my wife's theme is cows.

So we got Toy cows and cows and, okay, you know, cups and themes. And so you'll have kind of that theme where something that's kind of a toy like thing that keeps them going. And even some comedians use, I saw a comedian a week or two ago who had props that he used in his comedy show, and it was a fundraiser for cancer, and he had a little toy horse. And, you know, leave, hold a little toy horse in his hands. He says, Well, you know, we're, we're not horsing around here anymore, and just some dumb joke here. You know about that? And I remember, you might remember the, there's a pretty famous comedian in Las Vegas, Carrot Top. He uses props all the time, right? The one I used to grew up with was Gallagher. Remember him the sledge Matic, smashing watermelons and things.

Yeah, you never wanted to be in the front of one of his shows. That's

Right, that's right. I love that kind of thing. And I even did that when I was like a counselor at camps in the summertime. I did my version of the sledge O Matic for the little kids, you know, using produce and baseball bats and things like that and so but I just had a lot of fun with it. But I just like to have fun and toys, and Playtime is one of the ways to have fun.

And I think when we deal with something, some you know, trauma, like cancer or any other things, there's some times we just need to have the things that help us to have some fun, or even some studies about this that you and I have looked some things here. So let's talk for a minute about some of the ways that play and play therapy can be helpful to us in regards to coping with cancer. So let's just take your situation there. Let's begin there. You mentioned how some people gave you stuffed animals and things like, how did that help you? And how do you maybe see that as being a helpful thing?

Yeah, well, like I said, you know, I love stuff, animals and, and to me, it represented that they were there with me, you know. And, and I think a really good representation of the stuffed animals is the fact that many police officers carry a supply of stuffed animals in their cars, and then when they have to deal with small children, they give them a stuffed animal. You know, there's something about that that takes us back to when we were little, and it's comforting and, you know, and, and maybe life isn't quite as hard and as scary as we thought, you know. And sometimes it just helps to hug it, right, you know, to hold it close and to have that little fuzzy thing that you're rubbing up against your face.

Yeah, reminds me of a conversation I had a couple weeks ago as well, with a police officer. I happened to be in an event where I struck up a conversation with one of the security people at this event, a conference. And he also, you know, his security job was part time gig. He was a full time police officer for what we call around here, IMPD in Annapolis Metropolitan Police Department, which is a pretty big city, and they deal with all the big city problems. He said he was telling me about the about the teddy bear thing, and how there's a regulation in their police department, maybe with the city, they can't do that any longer, some health thing.

And he was kind of, and he was kind of mourning that. He said they've had to be very creative about finding other ways to be comforting to people, because they knew that the stuffed animals did work. And I think at so I was, you know, we were just talking about that a little bit, because there's this emotional connection to Toy right, you know, and it can be positive emotions, maybe sometimes not so positive emotions, but the stuffed animal happy, safety, love, love, positive feelings, and maybe they even in where, if we're an adult dealing with a cancer or some other deal, it can maybe help us connect with positive childhood experiences. I think that, right? That's good, the case.

Yeah, we think of a happier time.

Yeah, comfort and that type of thing. And I think there's something to be said about collecting things that are positive, right?

We need cows and the chickens and.

Right, all those things you probably know people who do whatever it is. You know,

I have two shells of stuffed beagles that are looking down on me right now,

You go and one of my things is snow globes. I have about an area shelf behind me here and off to my off to my right. I have, I forget exactly how many, but it's about 50 snow globes that I've collect, collected from various places, you know, around the country that I've been and so that's, that's kind of my thing. But we collect things in order to give some sense of order, I think, you know, and yeah, I've known some people have had literally dozens, if not hundreds, of stuffed animals or some trinket of that type of thing. And I think that's a good thing as well, for the most part. We're talking about things that are helpful and not hurtful for the most part.

And I think if there may be some I gave you kind of a funny one to kind of scary in a weird way. We leave on vacation pretty soon, and one of the places my wife and I are going to go is bring it up in Nevada for part of our vacation. But anyhow, because we're going out to San Francisco and coming back through Nevada, anyhow, my son, who's 31 now, reminded me of a trip we took a to Nevada when he was a kid.

And we ended up in a place, some small town in Nevada, and we stayed a place called the clown hotel, I kid you not. It was a weird scary clowns. Every room was decorated with weird scary clowns, all kinds of clown paraphernalia everywhere. And there was also this old time Western cemetery right next door. And we're thinking, this is like out of a horror movie about, you know, wow. So we nice, but, but the point, he was just saying, Yeah, watch out for the clown, the things dead. So we'll, we'll probably steer clear of the clown hotel.

But my point is, there may be some toys or some things I don't bring up EVO unhappy memories, but a lot of it is evokes happy memories, right, right? Let's talk about play as a Act, the act of play, like playing with the toys, or playtime as a way to kind of restore ourselves, to replenish your energy or joy in our life. And I was talking to a woman who has written some things about therapeutic humor, and she is in her late 70s, and has a swing set in her yard, and she and her and her husband both swing and the swing set every day it's decent weather. They are there every day.

And then she's made a point that every day, every year, on her birthday, and other times a year, she does a cartwheel. So she does leave one cartwheel a little risky, I think she said she does it for every year of her life. I think that's what she said. But the point is, she likes to play, and she goes on trips with her grandchild, what have you. They find playgrounds to go to, and everybody plays. It's not just the grandkids, it's her too. So what do you think about the act of play, whether it's something like a playground or maybe even a video game or something that you do as a kind of restorative experience? What do you think about that?

Well, I think one of the things is it makes you think about something else. Yes, yeah, you know. And, and, of course, when we're playing, you know, it's like, you know, when you're swinging, when you're, you know, playing with your toys, whatever, then it comes back to, we're laughing, right? And we know how beneficial laughter can be. So laughter and humor and all of that, you know, I defy anybody to go and be swinging and not start laughing, you know, maybe just at the ludicrous of it, right? But, yeah, you're, you know, you it's, it's, it's something that takes your mind to a different place, even if it's just for a little bit.

If you think about it, I like to talk about them quite a bit. I watch my grandchildren play. They're, they're seven and four right now. So they I when those girls get involved with hard playing, whether it's was playing like Hungry, Hungry Hippo or some game, or where they're playing with their Barbie dolls, or whatever they're engrossed in it, you know, they are lost, right? And I think we as adults maybe need a time or two where we get lost in it. That might be playing, you know, Bucha with your friends, playing cards or something else, you know. But if you can get lost in something that maybe takes our mind off the trauma that's happening, right?

Yeah, right, you know. And it could be something solitary, you know, some of the things that we listen to and watch talked about, Legos, oh yeah, puzzles, you know, things like that, where you're having to focus on what you are doing, you know, and, and, and so, you know, again, it's, it's putting your mind in a different place, which then come becomes kind of restful.

Yeah, the Lego thing. I'm not a Lego person myself, but I know people who are. I have a sister, oh yeah, they build my sisters and her whole family, my sister and her husband and their adult children, they will spend hours building Lego things. And, of course, there's Lego world and Lego Land and people there in here in Indianapolis, where I met, there was an actual store which was just Legos. Oh yeah, we have Lego Land here in Atlanta. Yeah.

And, you know, clubs and whatnot to do that type of thing. And I know that's a pretty big theme park thing down in Orlando area. So people get lost in that. It's kind of a people get involved with something that is therapeutic in as much as it allows us to do something productive, that's kind of safe, that is kind of productive, helps us express things, explore things, try something new, and takes our mind off the trauma for a little bit, right?

Right, you know. And they use like puzzles. You know that the old jigsaw puzzles, right? And senior living communities, because that's something somebody can sit down and focus on and, and, of course, you know it needs to be appropriate. If it's memory care, maybe it's bigger puzzle pieces, you know, some things like that. But you know, that's definitely John. I knew somebody who did a puzzle that was just all one color, 1000 pieces. Now I am not a jigsaw puzzle person. It would not be calming to me or therapeutic to do something like that. I you know, I would last for, oh, maybe 10 minutes before

I'm sorry I'm kind of with you, but I know my mother lives in a senior community, and she's always got a puzzle working in her room. And they also got these common areas where people work on them together, the library and common areas. And it's a big deal. I mean, it's a big deal. You know, in fact, that several occasions, our family has bought puzzles for my mom as gifts for Christmas and birthdays and things like that.

Well, and then, you know, there's word games. There's crossword puzzles. I play Sudoku on my phone, yeah, and a lot of times I well, I do that, you know, in the evenings and, and it really does. It makes my mind focus on that, you know, and, and, and same, you know, with anything like that, you know, it makes it gives your mind a break from thinking this is not good.

Yeah, I think there's another aspect of playing with toys that one of the, some of the resources we looked at, mentioned to me, and I thought it made some sense to me to what you think about it is toys as an emotional proxy. And the example was used, used was like Hulk action figures or Barbie things like this that we're kind of saying you can cut the Hulk. You know, can kind of, when you give him the hope gets mad, he can turn into the Hulk and whatever.

But maybe we can allow our anxiety or our anger, whatever, going through that instead of acting out in some ways that are not necessarily healthy ourselves or kind of externalize our feelings, you know, good, bad or otherwise even ugly, through that, I know in some places, when I happen to have had several opportunities to visit the Children's Hospital here in my local community and although there are certain dolls that they use for cancer patient children that are bald, for instance, you know, yeah.

Yeah, well, and, and they also use them, you know, especially with smaller children who can't always articulate some things. And so they might say, point to where it hurts on the doll. And so then they can, you know, point to their head, because maybe they have a headache, you know, and, and, and, I mean, you know, that certainly could work also for someone who you know, you know, is, is older and not able to always articulate, you know, and, and then you get a hug on the doll, right? Yeah, it's, it's, it comes back to that comfort thing also.

Yeah, I think there's a, yeah, there's a several aspects. I just find this a little fascinating to think about the aspects of play and toys that can be helpful to us. There's another aspect of this that I hadn't thought about too much. It's research for our episode here today, and that is the area of the tactile comfort of toys, the certain kinds of toys that you can you know, I used to haven't done it for a while. I may take it up. Have a yo-yo.

And, you know, the yo-yo is this emotion of doing the yo-yo back and forth with your hand, right? And there's other people use, you know, fidget spinner thing type things, right? Or a little scratchy things, yeah. Or that there's, I forgot what they're called, but they're little, like two or three little balls that people can, you know, put between their maneuvering back and forth their hand juggling. I knew somebody who was juggled, you know, that kind of, that kind of thing.

And that's just one way of dealing with anxiety. You know, there are some people, you know, I know other people will go out who are capable of doing these things, go out and shoot baskets, if they can play basketball or maybe do a little hope in their office or whatever, you know, these type of things, or throw a ball around, whatever it would be, and help to ease anxiety and stress by doing something physical. And I think, you know, the puzzles is another example of that. Another aspect that some people do with toys is meditation, or just focus, how there is that they can take a toy and I'm thinking, actually, I'm thinking about the snow globes that I have. I know there's some people.

Right who would just like to watch it.

Right, kind of shake up the snow globe and just wait for the things to settle, and just use it as a time to have kind of a meditative moment. And of course, there's several types of toy type things with, oh, sand or whatever, things water, things that go through, through.

I'm thinking of a lava light. Remember those, you know, those, those that was actually very therapeutic to watch the lava light. Well, just get caught up in.

I don't do, I know we're on audio for some video. I have a lava light here too. I forgot about that. I have a lot, because I like to watch that, that too. But I think there's several different things here. And, yeah, there's also some. You know what we're talking about here is fun stuff. But you know, there is scientific is scientific data that backs a lot of this up, you know, that shows these things help to ease ourselves and give us some sense of dealing with the stress, you know, dealing with the stress and some control. And this is a positive way. And don't you think this is just, this is just so much better than just sitting there and stew in your own misery, right? You know, right? That's what you know.

Anything we can do to send our mind elsewhere, whether it's, you know, reading a book or watching something on TV, or, you know, one of the fidgety spinner thingies, or, you know, you know, or playing with a toy, yeah, it's, it's going to give your mind a break from thinking about all the gloom and doom.

Right, right, right. When, one more thing I thought about that somebody, when I was at a conference recently, gave me a red notes, and there's a, there's an event called the Red Nose Day.

Oh, yeah, Heart Association.

Yeah, I think his group, originally called comic relief, originally did it, and a lot of time it was for children in poverty. Was a was a benefit for but it's been used for a certain different organization. Somebody gave me the red nose. And the idea is, many people know who's could wear. The Red Nose is just a physical thing that you can do, just to be a little bit silly and that and that type of thing.

So I think our encouragement to our lifter upper is find a toy. Find a toy. You know, review your toy, even if you need to go buy yourself a toy, get a new toy. There's something fun about that, or invite your family members to not only get you whatever the latest electronic gizmo is on Amazon for your birthday, but get you a toy. And I encourage people to get something.

I, you know, I love video games and all that stuff. You know, I do that kind of thing, but I think there's something to be said for a tangible toy. Yeah, I got to get something away from a screen. I got this marble game my granddaughters gave me, so I got to put this thing together and the marbles. Go through that kind of thing and get something you can put your hands on that, that kind of thing, and just play and have some play time. So there's the there's the experience of having the thing and then set aside some time to play.

Right give your mind a break.

That's one of the ways we can turn the grim of cancer to the grin of a fulfilled life.

I love it. I love it. Well, I'm ready for another grin. So how about we have another one of your bad dad jokes of the day?