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Are You Ready for
Cancer Jokes?
By Sydney Love
BEFORE PROCEEDING PLEASE
STOP TO READ THIS CAUTIONARY ARTICLES
AND
Does Cancer Have a
Sense of Humor?
While humor is a
good companion when you’re in treatment for cancer, you may
not want cancer jokes for your personal companion. This is especially
true if you just found out that you have cancer. I know because
I have been there. However, after a period of tears and anxiety,
I began to feel better during and after hearing cancer jokes. Eventually,
you may want to come back here and read these jokes.
Like me, you may eventually
discover that laughter helps the medicine go down. In fact, more
than fifteen years ago 60 Minutes did a report about The Wellness
Community, a support program for cancer patients and their families.
They began by showing a room full of cancer patients laughing at
this joke:
What do you call a person
who has a compulsion to get lymphoma over and over again? . . .
A lymphomaniac.
Millions who watched the
show probably asked themselves whether they would be able to find
humor and laughter in the face of a life-threatening illness. For
me the matter was certainly put to the test in 1993, when I was
informed that I had prostate cancer. This was about the worst news
that I had ever had. Terrified of dying a painful, miserable and
lingering death, but recalling what I had read in Norman Cousins's
book, "The Anatomy of an Illness," I obtained an
armful of comedy videos and started to work. It didn't help. Maybe
it might work for his illness, but cancer was another matter. Cancer
was not funny!
Fortunately, however, I
joined a cancer support group. In fact, it happened to be at one
of the Wellness
Community facilities. Then, after the first three months, I
noticed that we laughed as much as we cried. Soon I was making jokes
about my own condition. Surprisingly, I felt better! I even collected
the jokes that I and other people brought to the group and was soon
on my way to writing a book about healing humor for cancer survivors.
The point is that, when
you are first informed you have cancer, there is no such thing as
"humor." Once you have learned to live with your diagnosis
and with your treatment, however, you can benefit from humor. A
good laugh relieves stress for everyone, which researchers are beginning
to demonstrate. The relief of laughter can be especially beneficial
for cancer patients, who have more than enough stress to deal with.
It's now more than five
years since my prostate was removed and since then no other cancer
has been found. Was my cancer cured because I laughed? I don’t
know. Of course, it could recur and the medical profession makes
sure that I get periodic tests and check ups; yet I'm no longer
overly concerned about having cancer.
What I do know is that
laughing sometimes (and crying sometimes) greatly improved my quality
of life. I have even known dozens of people with advanced cancer
who managed to cope with their situation by using humor. That's
why I was the humor editor of CancerOnline.org (which is no longer
active). Now I'm glad to have LearningPlaceOnline use my jokes to
bring humor into the lives of those who are going through the cancer
experience—patients, caregivers, family and friends.
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