I have only this to say: through a number of surgeries and other procedures, I have always figured that if I was a happy camper, if I had a sense of humor and made my doctors and nurses laugh, they would want to come back and see me. That is, through my humor and my optimism, I might receive better treatment than the curmudgeon in the next room.

A personal and untested theory, I admit, but I'm sticking with it.

Hope and humor!

There may be something to that - as a psychiatrist, part of the training was to recognize and address the reactions we had to patients so that "unlikeable" patients did not get short-changed in their care.

I would also add that even if having a positive attitude has no effect on the overall outcome of a disease (which is almost certainly the case), if you have a choice between being sick and miserable or sick and happy, pick sick and happy. Like I tell my adolescent patients: "You might not be able to make things better, but you can always make them worse."