Laughter is a best medicine for IWK’s newest healing clown

John Lang has been staying during a IWK Health Centre for over a month and is customarily in pain, yet a child with intelligent palsy is always good for a boisterous giggle when a hospital’s newest staff member visits.

After all, she’s a clown.

Nana Margie recently started work during a Halifax sanatorium as a healing clown, replacing Buddington a Clown following his depart late final year.

Lang, 16, is one of many patients she interacts with on a unchanging basis.

The non-verbal teenager from Fortune Bridge, P.E.I., has spent substantial time during a hospital, being a formidable box and carrying undergone medicine to scold a spinal bend in 2016.

But Nana Margie never fails to lighten his day, his mom Mary Lang said.

“When John spots her entrance down a hallway, he screams and he laughs and he hollers. She has that special something,” pronounced Mary Lang, a retired teacher who has been caring for John since he was a baby, and adopted him in 2012.

“She’s funny, she’s vibrant, she moves with her hands, she’s really artistic and a children adore that — generally children like John who are pang and who are in pain many of a time.”

Although Nana Margie spends many of her day clowning around, she takes her new position really seriously.

She remarkable a children she visits don’t customarily get to confirm what happens to them while they’re during a hospital.

“That can infrequently feel daunting and maybe even a tiny bit scary,” she pronounced in an accent that’s tough to place, yet hints during origins in Cape Breton, Newfoundland and Scotland.

So when Nana Margie visits with a child, she hopes to give a children a clarity of control and empowerment.

“I wish for them to feel as yet that moment, whatever we’re selecting to do, whatever a diversion might be or a communication we’re having, that they’re a one that has a contend on how that goes,” she said.

Nana Margie has a credentials in mental health and earthy support work, theatre, playground humanities and acrobatics.

Grandma Nan Island

She tells a children she’s from a puzzling place subsequent to Grand Manan Island off New Brunswick, called Grandma Nan Island.

Chantal LeBlanc, a co-ordinator with child life services during a IWK Health Centre, pronounced Nana Margie plays a critical purpose during a hospital.

“Our healing jester needs to have an bargain of a impact of highlight and hurdles that families are facing,” pronounced LeBlanc.

She pronounced Buddington left large clown shoes to fill, yet Nana Margie is befitting for a purpose and was welcomed by a patients and families during a IWK.

LeBlanc pronounced she’s creative, spontaneous, enterprising and funny.

“Sometimes you’ll see her only dancing around in a hallways,” pronounced LeBlanc, adding that she’s during a sanatorium from Monday to Thursday.

“It gives them a genuine joyous moment, and not only for a kids, yet also for all a family members, to make this a tiny reduction of a frightful place for them.”

On a surveillance for ‘the gift’

Nana Margie pronounced when she comes into a room — after knocking and receiving accede from a child to enter — she’s always on a lookout for “the gift.”

“You’re looking for that chairman to honour we with that one gift,” she said, her knees soaring over a tiny list as she sits in a child-size chair in a hospital’s charming playroom.

“Maybe it’s that they’ve brought their courtesy to one sold fondle in a room, or maybe it’s that they uncover we they have an seductiveness in a sold theme ⁠— and we run with that gift.”

A self-proclaimed “resident fool,” Nana Margie also likes to play with objects in a room, like toilet paper or a crumpled adult square of paper.

She described John Lang as a prankster.

‘We’re swell shouting a whole time’

“John likes to put a hole in a building and have other people penetrate in there. So each day it’s a guessing diversion of where that hole is,” pronounced Nana Margie.

“Sometimes I’ve depressed into it, infrequently I’ve thrown things into it, infrequently we have to yield behind out of it. But possibly approach we’re swell shouting a whole time.”

The jester is versed with a beeper and is often paged to revisit patients. Early in a day, she meets with staff to establish who might need a revisit from her that day.

She also meets adult with children in hallways, and infrequently even accompanies them to procedures.

“It is positively so special to watch a communication that Nana has with some of the friends, and being means to see her casually change with whatever that child wants to be means to do,” pronounced LeBlanc.

“It doesn’t matter age, it doesn’t matter what’s going on — Nana is there to support as needed.”

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Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/nana-margie-iwk-new-therapeutic-clown-1.5444781?cmp=rss