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Does Cancer Have a Sense of Humor?

By Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT

Two years ago, when I was executive director of CancerOnline.org, I received an e-mail in which the writer asked us to eliminate our cancer jokes section because he believed it was offensive to "people who have lost someone in their lives due to cancer, and to the victims of cancer." He may not have known of research concerning the mind-body connection, which sees laughter as a potential influence in healing. All he knew was that he had a great deal of pain in losing a very dear friend to cancer. So it was not surprising that he didn't appreciate cancer jokes. But his e-mail gave me a chance to express my own opinion of cancer jokes, a topic about which I had been meaning to write for a long time. I have made a few revisions to that article and hope this will give you a new perspective on laughing at cancer, and other "serious" diseases.

When Joking About Cancer Makes Us Laugh

When "60 Minutes" had a segment about The Wellness Community, a national program of support for cancer patients and their families, I was impressed with the program, not realizing that I would soon co-found a TWC facility in the Pasadena, California, area. One of the most interesting features of the program was a "Joke Fest" at which participants with cancer laughed whole-heartedly at the following joke:

Question: "What do you call a young woman who keeps getting lymphoma over and over again?"

Answer: "A lymphomaniac."

Although I also laughed, apparently along with millions of viewers, I remember feeling a bit uneasy in doing so. After all, this was CANCER they were poking fun at. I wasn't at all sure that such a joke was "politically correct." One isn't supposed to make fun of people who are different than we are, especially when they are suffering such a terrible disease.

After some thought, however, two things changed my mind as I came to appreciate the value of "cancer jokes" (and laughter in general) for cancer patients.

First, I was aware that my reaction was similar to those times when an ethnic comic makes fun of cultural stereotypes. I laugh along with the audience. Yet I am aware that the same joke told by a member of another ethnic group wouldn't seem nearly as funny. Why? The reason, it seems to me, is that the audience recognizes the comic is not suggesting we laugh at his or her ethnic group, but at the situations in which members of that group find themselves—situations that often grow out of the insensitivity and ignorance of others.

In fact, it seems to me that perhaps the reason a white audience laughs at African-American or Hispanic humor is because the comic has used laughter as a lens through which we can better see our stereotypes and prejudices. Or to put it another way, as Clifford Kuhn, MD, notes, "Laughter helps us remember all the things we have in common."

Similarly, when a cancer patient makes a joke about cancer, we listen to it in a different way than we would if that joke were told by someone else—or if the joke made fun of cancer patients themselves, rather than cancer and the circumstances in which patients find themselves.

The second reason I began to view cancer jokes as "acceptable" came out of personal experience because, while I have not had cancer, some of my friends have struggled with the disease. Also, I've worked for many years as a therapist with people who have cancer and other life-threatening illness—or as I prefer to say, "life-challenging" illness. Although I have commiserated and cried with them as they've gone through the difficulties of treatment, I have also laughed with them. And it is clear that this laughter helped them feel better.

Laughing at Cancer Takes Away Some of Its Sting

Of course, I've never heard of anyone who laughed as they walked out of their doctor's office right after learning they had cancer. Even if they have a light-hearted disposition in general, their reaction is usually similar to that of Sydney Love, who became the humor editor of CancerOnline.org, and whose story is told in A Lot of Cancer Jokes. As he says, when he first got his diagnosis, it was just about the worst news that I had ever had. After a period of time and some trial and error, he discovered the value of humor and, especially, cancer jokes.

Betty Cea, a lymphoma patient, wrote "The Top 10 Reasons I Can't Be Sick Anymore" and the very fact that she would write the list, let alone see humor in her situation, is a good illustration of how some cancer patients use humor to relieve tension, letting a bit of light into the dark corners of their world. In her e-mail giving us permission to use her name, she notes, "My hair left, my dysfunctional family whom I love very much stayed, and the cancer has come back. I might as well laugh while I fight . . . cancer hates a sense of humor . . ."

Not all cancer patients, and many who don't have cancer, will understand that Betty's attitude is, for her, an essential tool in dealing with the discomfort and reality of recurrence. It can take a long time (and some people never get to that point) to realize that while cancer may - and the operative word is may -- rob a person of long life, the disease need not rob one of joy in life.

As Ronny Fay Jevne and Alexander Levitan write in No Time for Nonsense: Self-Help for the Seriously Ill:

"Of course serious illness is serious! Why else would they call it 'serious?' That is all the more reason to avail yourself of every advantage -- including laughter."

Someone who has made a career out of helping people laugh and who collects anecdotes about sick people who laugh is a man who calls himself a "Jollytologist." His name is Allen Klein and he's the author of several excellent books, such as The Courage to Laugh: Humor, Hope and Healing in the Face of Death and Dying. The following story is a prime example.

"Leo was in the last stages of liver cancer. When he came to my office, he looked egg-yolk yellow. He reported that a hoped-for decision was not possible, that his ex-wife was already closing in for part of his estate, that his lawyer had said, "Don't worry, you're basically bankrupt," and that the pain was becoming intolerable. For some reason my spontaneous response was, "Other than that, how's your week been?" I was immediately concerned I had been inappropriate. However, Leo was laughing so hard I could hardly understand him as he said, "Thank goodness, someone still thinks I am alive! I am so tired of everyone treating everything so seriously."

Even If Cancer Doesn't Have a Sense of Humor, You Can

Here are the basic reasons I believe cancer jokes belong on a website devoted that has a section devoted to helping people with all kinds of chronic and serious illness.

Laughter can soothe and heal tender hearts. Not laughing—simply because your life isn't going the way you would prefer - gives cancer power to have greater control over your life than it deserves.

Everyone has the right to laugh as long as he or she lives. If cancer patients like the jokes we print, and if they send us a joke they want to share with others, who am I to deny them a forum for the kind of humor that helps them go through whatever it is they have to go through?

People who come to this site don't require my censorship. Of course, most of those who have just been newly diagnosed will, in all likelihood, not want to read our jokes, which is why we have written "CAUTION" across the top of the cancer jokes index page. Like ratings for movies, we hope this prevents people from accidentally seeing something that might offend them.

Even ordinary life of healthy people can become pretty grim if we can't make fun of the vicissitudes and vagaries that come our way. Some days the only way to get through is to laugh about the absurdity of trying to be in control of things over which we have no control. And some days that goes double when you have a serious, somber, grave, non-frivolous, solemn, grim, life-challenging illness

© Copyright 2000, Revised 2002, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT