Humor vs. Humorous

The other day I called to check up on a friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer a few months back and is having a pretty rough time handling the physical and mental side effects of chemotherapy. She recently downed her third round of chemical cocktails so I asked her how she was holding up. She paused before answering and then broke down into tears and blurted out, "I can't do it anymore! I try to joke about being bald or laugh about the absence of my left breast. But, the bottom line is that I don't find anything humorous about cancer. How do you do it?"

Whoa, hold the horses! Who said anything about finding cancer humorous? Let's be clear, there is nothing, I repeat, nothing humorous about cancer. Cancer sucks - plain and simple. And while there is nothing humorous about it, I certainly rely on my humor to help get me through this battle. This may sound contradictory -- but there is a huge difference between finding something humorous and drawing on one's humor to help get them through a difficult situation. Let me explain...

A few weeks ago, I was sitting by the pool when I saw that some fresh ivy vines were beginning to creep beneath the siding of the house. "Ugh," I thought to myself, "it's time to rip those vines out again." Because if left untended, those vines become destructive and will smother neighboring flowers and plants, suffocate shrubbery and trees, spread under the siding of your home and coil around your electric meters and telephone boxes. So I spent a good part of the morning yanking and shearing those out-of-control vines to prevent the other residents of the garden bed from being evicted. And that's when it hit me--cancer is just like those neglected ivy vines.

You see, cancer not only takes over the physical part of your body but it weaves its way into the mental part as well and, just like those vines coiling around the branches of your azalea bush, it can suffocate you if left untended. So I use mental garden shears, otherwise known as humor, to keep cancer's destructive vines under control.

Now before you start brushing up on your stand-up comedy routine, let's be clear -- I'm not suggesting that one of those "so a priest, a rabbi and cancer walk into a bar" jokes is going to lift you up when you've been knocked down by one of cancer's perilous blows. And the fact that I joke about the perkier set of ta-tas that I'll get when this battle is over doesn't mean that I take the mastectomy in my near future lightly. I would gladly hold onto these size 34As if it meant not having to enter the ring with the big 'C'. I have learned to laugh at the temporary miseries that cancer has thrown my way because I refuse to let it weave its noxious vines through my brain. I mean, it's not like you get any time off for serious behavior, otherwise those bald jokes would be thrown right out the window.

According to the American Cancer Society, a woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer every three minutes. Every 13 minutes a woman in America dies of breast cancer. And that's just breast cancer...the numbers are astounding when you include all the other types of cancers. {Pretty funny stuff, huh? I don't know about you, but I'm not laughing} In the short amount of time since I heard those words "you have cancer," seven girlfriends of mine have been diagnosed with cancer and three have lost loved ones to this insidious disease. Yep, I think we can all agree that:
(1.)

(2.) There is absolutely nothing humorous about it.

But, I will continue to find humor in the exaggerated sighs of relief that my kids let out when I stub my toe and discover that everything is still intact (Taxol wreaks havoc on your nails...thankfully it hasn't claimed one yet) or how my "Beckham" hairdo has now become the most rubbed head in the household (oh, how soft those new hairs on my noggin are) because I refuse to allow cancer to suffocate my spirit, drown out my laughter and overtake my life with its misery.

Cancer you don't stand a chance...