November 14, 2006 - A Little Cancer Humor

I try to keep up with a few other blogs written by cancer survivors. One of them, My Private Casbah, by a New Orleans woman named Bint Alshamsa, is quirky, but amusing - sometimes even profound.

Here’s a bit of cancer survivor’s humor, from her November 2, 2006 entry. I realize it may not be for everyone.

You’ve gotta be able to laugh to get through an experience like this...

Thirteen Fun Things To Do When You Have Incurable Cancer
by Bint Alshamsa

1. If you're planning on getting married before you croak, you can always ask the florist for a discount by promising her repeat business in the form of exclusive rights to your up-coming funeral display.

2. Telling a mechanic that you need to get your car repaired so that you can drive to MD Anderson for a last ditch experimental treatment attempt for your incurable cancer is a good way to get him to finish with yours before he even starts on the dozen cars that were there before you.

3. If no one knows that the oncologist says you're in remission, you can get really good presents from your friends by telling them that this might be the last birthday/Eid/Christmas that you'll ever get the opportunity to celebrate and they'll want to make it a really good one for you.

4. You can eat whatever the hell you want. I mean it's not like you have to worry about having clogged arteries fifty years from now.

5. You can get your partner to "secretly" tell everyone at the family reunion that all of the medications you're taking are making you a bit delerious. After that you can go around throughout the day telling everyone who has ever pissed you off exactly what you've thought of them all these years. (Be sure to include a few jibberish statements every now and then to make it more believable.)

6. During chemotherapy, you can sleep for an extra thirty minutes every morning because you don't have to worry about fixing your hair before work.

7. You can surprise all of the radiation technicians by coming to your treatment wearing a bikini and telling them that you're ready for your tanning appointment.

8. When you're in the hospital hooked up to a bunch of tubes and machines, you can have a good laugh at your sibling's expense by telling all of your young neices and nephews that you got like that from eating too many vegetables as a child.

9. You can sleep in on election day. After all, who cares what candidate wins? It's not like you're going to have to live with them for the next couple of years. Or better yet, do go out and vote and tell everyone in line that you've been a life long(name of whatever political party you hate the most) voter but you're using the final election day of your life to vote for the other party because you've finally seen the light and decided to do the right thing for the first time before you die.

10. Having a few cancerous ribs removed from your chest will make it a lot easier to fit into those too-small clothes you've been saving in your closet.

11. You can tell people who don't know about your cancer that you got all of those scars from saving a small child from being mauled by mountain lions because everybody loves a hero.

12. When you go to the grocery store, always wear something that shows your radiation burns and leave your wig at home. Then when you get in the long line, you can ask people if they'd be so kind as to let you go ahead of them because you have to hurry up and get back home to your wife/husband/partner who is even more contagious than you are. I have it on very good authority that this one works great.

13. Make random strangers angry in crowded parking lot by parking in the handicapped spot and then using your cane as your partner as you do the Merengue all the way to the entrance of the building.