Laughter is not the best medicine

I have a patient who has tuberculosis (not to be confused with tb, the well-respected and recently hitched wjw reader), and he's been in the hospital for a few weeks now. Yesterday, he was crying because no family or friends had visited him. He told me he had been praying all day and had said, "Dear God, please don't let me be f**ked." Now, I realize the poor guy has tb and is really lonely, but I found his use of profanity to be hysterical. And it was a good thing I was wearing a mask because I was grinning from ear to ear.

I went to see a another patient this morning. When he sat up, he let out an excruciating yelp. "My damned testicles always get in the way!" he cried. Nothing could be less funny than a sick man sitting on his own genitalia, but at the time I thought it was hilarious. I had to grind my teeth to keep from laughing out loud.

Later on, the resident performed a spinal tap on a patient. During the procedure, the patient released a loud expulsion of gas. The fart itself wasn't as funny as the fact that nobody acknowledged it. It was a malodorous elephant in the room that everyone else was able to ignore. Well, I couldn't ignore it. To keep from laughing out loud, I intentionally inflicted pain on myself by biting the inner part of my cheek.

The above vignettes are just a few examples of a reoccurring issue I'm having. Not only have I found that I have an immature sense of humor, but I've also discovered it's difficult to separate humor from sickness, and this could end up being a real problem.