Gilda and Cancer

 

Holy Fools Day

Today, April 1, I honor one of the saints of laughter – Gilda Radner, who looked for humor in the midst of her cancer, and found it. She bore witness to the power of comedy, and is one of my Holy Fools.

You probably remember Gilda from Saturday Night Live. She died of ovarian cancer in 1989 at age 42, and her husband Gene Wilder was devastated. A speaker from Gilda’s Club in Chicago met with my cancer support group and talked about how they are helping people navigate through their cancer. The Club was created to continue the hope and support that Gilda found in The Wellness Community in Santa Monica as she went through treatments. Her book It’s Always Something records her journey though surgery and chemotherapy, and it was published shortly before her death.

Gilda noticed there was a problem when her fatigue wouldn’t go away. She went to multiple doctors who misdiagnosed her. Eventually she found a doctor who knew what was going on and began therapy. Because of Cancer Research, treatments for ovarian and other cancers have improved significantly since then with the development of targeting therapies like PARP inhibitors and antibody-drug conjugates.

Gilda said, “I just didn’t want to be in tragedy …. I just wanted to be what I am – a comedienne, a jester.” “If I’m gonna have it, I’ve gotta find out what could be funny about it. … My life had made me funny and cancer wasn’t going to change that.”

Most of us with cancer are reluctant to appear angry or depressed in front of others. I wanted to be aware of every emotion I was feeling so that I could work with it and so that the people I leaned on for support would know how to help. 

I also wanted to share my emotions honestly to let others who were dealing with cancer realize that whatever emotions they were feeling were valid, that this is how it feels to have cancer, and these are some of the thoughts that keep running through your mind.

Like Gilda, I didn’t want to be “the one with cancer” but the one who was coping with cancer as a challenge. Gilda said, “Once you have cancer you live on a tightrope. You live from day to day.”

One day Gilda wondered, “How many times does humor come into the business of oncology and chemotherapy?” She thought her doctors and nurses needed some humor, so she made a video of her playing tennis and saying how chemo had improved her game, knowing that the chemo hadn’t helped her at all and she still wasn’t good at it. Without the sound working, she said the it was Chaplinesque funny, but I imagine her looking like another holy fool, Buster Keaton, as she served poorly and fell down on the court trying to catch up with the balls.

At The Wellness Community, the cancer patients often held parties with each other and danced to celebrate being alive because they wanted to affirm the presence of life.

Jokes are still funny when we have cancer, and we need to let ourselves laugh at them, and we need to continue to celebrate the good things that come our way each day. Humor releases the tension of cancer treatments and softens the terror that builds up within us. It helps us breathe with hope.

Gilda Radner (June 28, 1946 – May 20, 1989)