​Why I Joke About Having Cancer

It has come to my attention that a lot of people are made uncomfortable by my level of comfort with the fact that I have cancer. It has also been brought up that some people are in fact offended by the fact that not only am I remarkably comfortable with this state of being, but I also tend to make a lot of jokes about it. Now I understand that some people will always be offended by this sort of thing, but I'd like to explain my side of things.

I have cancer. I have cancer and one of the most sarcastic senses of humor you can imagine. I've always dealt with hard things in my life with that sense of humor in tact whenever I could. It's not a defense mechanism, and I'm not avoiding dealing with anything. Seriously, I have cancer. You can't really be in denial for very long about that even if you want to. 

But that's also no reason to go through the process angry or sad or depressed all the time. Yes, bad days happen. I've spoken about that before. But happiness is a state of mind, not a set of circumstances, and I made up my mind the very first day that I was going to handle this with as much humor and strength as I could possibly muster.

So...enter cancer jokes.

Like for real, I made a cancer joke that very first day when I was told how rare my diagnosis is. I told the room that I find it funny that I can't even do cancer normally. Right there from my hospital bed.

I joke about having cancer because my situation is so cosmically unlikely to happen. I joke about it because at times if I can't see the humor in what's happening to me, I'd get lost in the despair of what's happening to me. You make your own choices about how you respond to the situations in your life. I choose laughter.

I do not take my situation lightly. I don’t take cancer lightly at all. I realize, I dare say more than many people, the gravity of this situation. That is arguably why I joke about it. I’ve been told by many medical professionals that my attitude about this situation will go a long way towards aiding in my healing. I don’t think it’s just a myth that facing illness with a positive attitude and a sense of humor helps you get better. I’ve witnessed it in my own life.

My papa (grandfather on my mother’s side) has had a plethora of medical issues for many years now. He has been told several times for one reason or another that he didn’t have long to live, and he has outlived the timeline given by every single doctor to tell him that. Every time he faces a new ailment he faces it with his head held high and a smart remark in his arsenal (I get my sense of humor from him). Just days before I was diagnosed, my papa had to have one of his legs amputated. When he was given the news, he immediately started making jokes about his socks lasting twice as long now. 

My papa is my hero.

If I can face the entirety of this cancer journey with as much good humor as my papa has faced everything he’s been through, I think I’ll consider this a success. I think it’s situations like this that show who you really are as a person, anyway. I want to be the type of person who manages to see the good in any situation and keeps my good humor regardless of my life’s circumstances. 

The Road So Far

Sometimes it feels as though I’ve had cancer all my life. Like I’ve been living with this diagnosis from the time I was born. Sometimes it feels like I was just told yesterday, and like I’m still adjusting to the new realities of my life. In reality, it hasn’t even been three months yet since I received the news. I guess there has just been that much activity.

Right now I’m still in somewhat of a holding pattern as far as the battle is concerned. I have received four rituxan treatments so far, which is part of the chemo cocktail but not a chemo treatment in and of itself, and one full chemo treatment, as well. We are still taking the chemo treatments one step at a time because they don’t want my blood levels to get to far off, which is a big concern for my doctors. I was anemic before we started chemo, and they’re worried if we do too much chemo, I might have to get a blood transfusion. And there is of course the ever-present goal of making sure the baby is ok!

As far as the progression of the cancer itself, we received the amazing news a few weeks ago that the rituxan treatments were able to shrink the mass by a full third! We and the doctors were all amazed by this, as they were simply hoping that the rituxan would simply hold the mass off and buy us more time before starting chemo. Now I’m excited to see just how much progress we can make against the cancer with the full chemo treatments!

I’ve been able to take myself off my oxygen a bit since the mass shrank. The mass was situated in my chest in such a way that it was pushing on my heart and lungs, making it difficult for me to breathe. Since it shrank I’m able to go quite a while without needing assistance to breathe, even when I’m up and moving around. My energy levels and weight have still been fluctuating quite a bit, and my eating is erratic at best from week to week, but every ultrasound we’ve done of the baby shows that she is growing at a perfect rate, so as long as that keeps up my doctors say we should be ok!

So that’s a bit of an update on me so far. I am currently 20 weeks pregnant, the baby is growing nicely and the cancer is shrinking nicely. We have so much to be thankful for on this journey, despite how terrifying it sometimes can seem. One of these days I will sit down and simply write a blog about how much we really do have to be thankful for, an itemized list of how blessed we’ve been even with a cancer diagnosis.