Here I am chemo-bald. I cannot compete with that famous photograph of Joan Lunden battling breast cancer on the cover of the October 2014 edition People magazine. The TV host looks stunning with or without hair. I do not, so this hairless cartoon of me will have to suffice.
I had a motto while dealing with both breast cancer and an unfaithful husband: “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.”
I tried to find absurd humor in every situation I was faced with. I have to admit that the motto I chose is not original but more than 200 years old—it was inspired by Figaro’s comment from the 1773 play by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Le Barbier de Séville, “I force myself to laugh at everything, for fear of having to cry.” This play was later made into the famous opera, The Barber of Seville, by Gioachino Rossini. For me, keeping a sense of humor was crucial to be able to avoid the cancer victim mentality. I did not want to become my illness and have it define who I was.
Thus, my advice to anyone in similar circumstances to mine is to focus on laughter therapy. What makes you laugh? For me, anything done by the Monty Python team works every time—the TV shows, all the movies and even the series made for Germany. Who would have thought that the Lumberjack Song would work so well in German? Check out my Laughter Therapy webpage which includes a list of some of my favorite comedy movies. At least in retrospect, you may even find some black comedy in your own life’s challenges. A sense of humor keeps you young at heart. You do not stop laughing because you grow old—you grow old because you stop laughing. That’s a quote often attributed to Californian comedian Michael Pritchard, but variants of it have been around for at least a century.
As the old adage says, laughter is the best medicine, and a 2016 study in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine indicates that it has quantifiable positive effects, both psychological and physiological. Laughter Yoga, developed in 1995 by Madan Kataria in India, combines prolonged laughter with yogic breathing techniques, creating an exercise lasting 15 to 20 minutes. I am not sure I could get myself to laugh for that long and would rather do it naturally with friends than have to take chortling classes. Nevertheless, according to Laughter Yoga instructor Judy Mikeska, from Sonoma, California, prolonged, voluntary laughter not only improves your mood but also “strengthens the immune system, lowers blood pressure, reduces pain and lowers stress.”
I found that a sense of humor was often crucial to be able to deal with medical personnel and their staff. One therapist I was receiving treatments from had a receptionist who was so grumpy and unhelpful that I gave her the nickname “Grumpelstiltskin.” Ironically, her real name was Joy. It reminded me of a stunningly dim-witted woman called Athena in a local bank whom I once had the misfortune to have to deal with for some financial matters. Her parents had tempted fate by naming their baby after the Greek goddess of wisdom. I made it my business to try to get Joy to smile. I would crack jokes and thank her profusely for every little thing she did for me, like giving me a receipt for my payment. I even managed to make her laugh a couple of times. After a while, she became easier to deal with, and dare I say it, occasionally quite helpful.
Sometimes friends and relatives would clam up and act inhibited around me because they did not know how to behave around a “poor cancer victim” without offending her. I found that I could put them at ease by making jokes about my cancer, or about anything else that happened to be relevant. We could laugh together. I might loudly exclaim to a visitor, “Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam!” Especially if he or she was Star Trek fan. The expression is the Klingon phrase for “Today is a good day to die!”
There is apparently a similar Native American phrase about being ready to die, but that would put everything on a far too serious and esoteric plane. I find that there is much more humor to be mined from Star Trek than any Hopi Indian prophecy. After all, I have quite a few relatives and acquaintances who act like Klingons and Ferengi.
Even more universal than Star Trek jokes, however, was hair loss humor. Even men, who would never have to deal with breast cancer, would have a visceral understanding of what it was like to battle baldness. Chemo hair loss is a big deal for women, but unlike male baldness, it is not permanent. For that, I am exceedingly grateful!
Excerpt from CJ’s new book, My Wild Ride: How to Thrive After Breast Cancer and Infidelity, out October 2022.