Fatal Hilarity

By Suzan Balaa

If you could choose how to die, how would you cross over to the other side? My guess is many people prefer to die peacefully in their sleep. While that seems a lot better than drowning or suffocation, it's such a sudden, flimsy way to slip away. If it were up to me, I'd want my death to be a celebration of how I lived. I want to die laughing.

We?ve all laughed so hard we couldn't breathe. For me, these laughing-frenzies usually take place at the most awkward and inappropriate situations like in a crowded elevator, or when I'm sitting in the front row of a small class. Most of the time, the struggle to smother my laugh is funnier than the untimely joke, and that snowballs into a laughing-frenzy. As embarrassing as that may seem, everyone loves a good hysterical laugh, and there's even a good reason why you should. Laughter helps release enzymes and hormones that are helpful for normal functioning of various organs. It is also a good workout for respiratory, abdominal, leg, back and facial muscles. However, in a few special cases, laughter may actually contribute to the death of a person. This extremely rare phenomenon is called "fatal hilarity".

In mythology, it is told that the Greek soothsayer Calchas was foretold the day of his death by another prophet. He waited anxiously for this day to come and when the day arrived and the prophecy didn't seem to come true, he laughed so hard in cynicism at his victory over death that he dropped dead.

But can it really happen? In fact, there have been more than 10 registered cases of "fatal hilarity". On March 24th 1975 Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn, England, died laughing while watching an episode of The Goodies. In 1989 a Danish audiologist, named Ole Bentzen, died watching "A Fish Called Wanda". His heart was estimated to have beaten between 250 and 500 beats per minute, before he finally expired due to cardiac arrest. Also, not so long ago in 2003, Damnoen Saen-um, a Thai ice cream salesman, died while laughing in his sleep at the age of 52. With his wife unable to wake him up, he stopped breathing after two minutes of continuous laughter.

On a less morbid note, five interesting cases of loss of consciousness due to intense laughter have also been reported. This is called laughter-induced syncope. The laughter causes repetitive forced expirations which result in temporary reduction in blood flow, therefore causing a shortage of oxygen to the brain. One of these cases is a 56-year-old, moderately obese man who suffered laughter-induced syncope as he entertained his colleagues in a restaurant: While waiting for the meals to be served, a guest had told a very amusing joke and the patient began to laugh heartily, "Ha, ha, ha, ha..." in decrescendo until he was out of breath. To everyone's surprise, he then fell forward resting his head on the table and remained unresponsive for a few seconds before regaining consciousness. (Laugh syncope as a rare sub-type of the situational syncopes: a case report, Journal of Medical Case Reports).

In conclusion, not enough information is given about "fatal hilarity" cases to decide whether laughter was the cause of death, contributing factor, or just a coincidence. Nevertheless, you have to admit staring death with a smile on your face seems like a pretty cool way to go. So smile even when no one's looking and laugh hysterically. What's the worst that could happen?