Cancer Humor—Get It!
A poster below had this to say about my earlier blog regarding the small patch of skin cancer on my right arm:
As a survivor of a life-threatening, invasive cancer, I was actually unhappy with your breezy "I may have cancer" narrative--tends to trivialize a serious problem. Sorry, what you have is a common condition that has no invasive component, no tendency to metastasize, and no life-threatening implications.
To which I say...well, wouldn't it have been more offensive if I wrote about a non-life-threatening cancer with the utmost gravity? Or if I wrote about a life-threatening cancer with the utmost levity?
For what it's worth, the central commentary of that post was really about the absurdity of the doctor's office I went to. The cancer part was, if you will, a subplot.
And, yes, I do find it good for a few laughs.
Yesterday I happened to see a cousin of mine, a mother of four, who, about a month ago, had a golf-ball sized tumor removed from her brain. "You think you've got problems," I told her, showing her my band-aid. "I've got cancer."
My cousin, who understood full well what I was up to, had a good laugh.
Later, she couldn't remember the exact color of the house I grew up in. "You have to forgive me," she said. "I had a brain tumor."
She added that she thought she could use that excuse for about a year. I told her that, the next time I forgot something, I was going to use it: "You have to forgive me—my cousin had a brain tumor."
Okay, maybe we're a little twisted. But people respond to disease, whatever its degree of seriousness, differently. And humor, of course, is a defense mechanism. My maternal grandmother died of cancer; my mother had cancer; my stepfather had cancer; my father has skin cancer. My paternal grandfather, whom I never knew, had Parkinson's, from which he died. Basically, he starved to death. My dad also has Parkinson's. When I see him these days, I help cut his food. (Just keep passing the open windows, as Kurt Vonnegut once wrote.) It's beginning to look like Parkinson's has a genetic connection. So if typoos start to appear on this blog, buy me a drink, and don't forget the straw.
About certain things, you see, I have a dark sense of humor. Cancer and Dick Cheney, primarily.
On a more serious note, congratulations to the poster for surviving his or her experience with cancer, which clearly was vastly more serious than mine is. Whenever someone beats cancer, it's cause for celebration.
