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Humor Your Tumor

This column is dedicated to all individuals (and their loved ones) who are now battling cancer, and to Survivors whose cancer is in remission. I’ll occasionally leave you with a joke. This will usually be related to cancer, or some other source of stress in our lives. If you’ve heard a joke along these lines that you love, and would like to see it made available to everyone in this column, please send it to me at HaHaRemedy@viconet.com.

Finding Humor in Everyday Life
August, 2000
Paul E. McGhee, PhD

"From there to here and here to there, funny things are everywhere." (Dr. Seuss)

 One of the most important ways to use your sense of humor in support of your battle against cancer is to cultivate the habit of looking for humor in your everyday life--both in ways that relate directly to your cancer or cancer treatments and in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with the disease. In both cases, you go a long way in sustaining the hope, determination and positive attitude that signals your body to fight the disease. You also get the direct health benefits we've talked about in earlier Humor Your Tumor columns.

One woman I know just happened to watch a rerun of I Love Lucy before going for a chemotherapy treatment. She loves Lucy's humor, and was in a particularly good mood as she walked in for her treatment, because the episode was the famous "Vitameatavegamin" show in which Lucy gets more and more drunk while taking more and more doses of the product (which--without her knowledge--contains alcohol).

Amazingly enough, the usual nausea which had always accompanied her treatments was absent on this day. She was convinced it was Lucy that was responsible for this, and adopted the habit of watching Lucy every day before treatments--or of doing something else that would get her laughing a lot. While the nausea did not always disappear, it was always at a lower level than it had been. Even when her treatments were done, she was so hooked on the effect that Lucy had on her that she makes it a point to get Lucy or some other kind of humor into her life every day.

If you are a member of a cancer support group, make it a point to seek out those who have kept their sense of humor as they've gone through their treatments. Try to imitate their attitude and their habit of seeing the funny side of even the difficult days. If you never find anything to laugh at yourself, come right out and ask them the funniest thing that's happened to them in connection with their cancer. You might be surprised to find that they've found a light side of a situation you've dealt with yourself--but without humor. This will help you start seeing a light side when you're in comparable situations in the future.

Michael Landon, starring as Little Joe Cartwright in the long-running TV series Bonanza, was a model for us all during his bout with cancer. The media marveled at the way he kept up his spirits in the presence of poor odds of survival. His sense of humor played a crucial role in enabling him to do this. While discussing his condition, he asked the studio audience if anyone had ever taken a coffee enema. When someone answered "yes," he said, "You must be fun to have breakfast with."

At a news conference in which he discussed his health, he said he was especially helped in preparing for his death by a role he played in Highway to Heaven, ". . . since I played a dead guy anyway." In the same interview, he said, "I think you have to have a sense of humor about everything," and that included his illness.

Landon's ability to maintain a positive and fun attitude toward life helped sustain his family, friends and loved ones throughout his ordeal. The reason he was able to do this was that it was a well-established part of his personality. It was part of his daily approach to viewing and interacting with the world. If you are lucky enough to already have a life-long history of using your sense of humor in your daily life, you are a step ahead of the game when it comes to keeping your sense of humor on the tough days--the days when you're angry, exhausted, depressed, anxious or frustrated.

If you didn't have the habit of finding a funny side of your daily life at home, on the job, going to or from work, etc., before your cancer, you'll notice that it's very difficult to do so now that you have cancer. You're never in the right mood to find anything funny. And besides, you may be thinking, "How can you possible be thinking about humor when you've got cancer? There's absolutely nothing funny about this disease!"

Of course, you're right. The fact of your cancer can never be funny. And yet, in the programs I do every year for National Cancer Survivors Day I always have several people come up to me afterwards and say, "You're so right! If it weren't for my sense of humor, I would never have survived the treatments, let alone the disease."

Using your sense of humor in the midst of your cancer doesn't mean you're not taking the illness seriously (although you can use your sense of humor to hide from the reality of the disease). In fact, several patients have told me that it's because they take their illness seriously that they find as many opportunities to laugh in the midst of it as they can. They know that their sense of humor is one of the most powerful tools they have to sustain the optimistic, hopeful positive frame of mind that enables their body to do its best in battling the disease.

In the next couple of articles, we'll focus on how to develop the habit of finding humor in your everyday life--even if you've never done this much up to now.

[Adapted from P.E. McGhee Health, Healing and the Amuse System: Humor as Survival Training, Kendall-Hunt, 1999. To order call 800-228-0810.]