Support4Change Blog

April 26, 2007

Commentary on Life Today

By Arlene Harder, MA, MFT
 

Recently I received an e-mail from a cancer survivor who shared an approach to life I admire. It shows how one can move right through a difficult situation with a bit of humor. Christina, who gave me permission to use her story, wrote:

I thought that others may enjoy my real life experience. Let me start off by saying, I am 27 and have recently survived Breast cancer!

After my first treatment of chemo, all of my hair fell out and it took me months to leave home without wearing a wig. The very first night that I mustered enough confidence to go out with only a ball cap I went into a convenience store and right away noticed the people staring at me. A few people smiled and kept walking but the man behind the counter had something to say.

“Ma’am, are you ok?” he asked, almost wishing he had never said a word.

I smiled and after making my purchase, I lifted my ball cap and said “I lost a bet.”

[The picture comes from the Max Cap Company in England. Also, you’ll find neat hats at Stylish Noggins, whose hats, caps and snoods are not open at the back.]

Christina’s story is a good addition to the Living Well Despite Illness section on Support4Change. I realize, of course, that joking about cancer is not to everyone’s taste, but I was introduced to laughing at illness through my work with The Wellness Community—Foothills, a cancer support program, in Pasadena, California. That’s where I became acquainted with Sydney Love. He is a cancer survivor who supplied me with many cancer jokes, some of which you can read on Cancer Jokes One and Cancer Jokes Two.

As I write in Does Cancer Have a Sense of Humor?, many cancer patients discover humor is a way to let a bit of light into the dark corners of their world. Betty Cea, a lymphoma patient, is one of them. When she sent me “The Top 10 Reasons I Can’t Be Sick Anymore,” which is the sidebar on Humor: A Powerful Coping Aid, she said:

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 …

As with all humor, the pleasure is in the punchline, the unexpected ending or twist to a story. And all such stories are, for me, all the better when they come from quick thinking. Too often my “clever” retorts are obvious when I’m on the way home from a conversation that got overheated, long after we needed something to calm the tension.

That’s why I’ve chosen this for a topic today. It doesn’t exactly fit under a Q-and-A Club category, but I am interested in how you might answer the following question:

When have you been able to defuse a tense situation, or insert a little humor into a depressing situation, by thinking quickly and humorously?

I’d love to hear from you. Just go to the Contact page on Support4Change.

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