cancer humor
Cafés are therapeutic. Good coffee, often fresh bakery items, and a place away where you can imagine a life beyond cancer. Instead of feeling cooped up at home, you’re among people, so you feel connected to the flow of everyday life. You can be reflective and creative. No one has to know you have cancer, unless you want to share this, and the staff in independent coffee places can be a great support.
Cartoonist Miriam Engelberg had two favorite San Francisco cafés where she went every day to create cartoons about her breast cancer, searching for the humor that existed along its edges to keep her anxiety under control. There are two cafés I go to in town, depending on the weather – one is indoors and the other has a patio under oak trees.
As for humor, I tend to veer into jokes when I describe the trauma of my prostate cancer treatments to other people – the different sizes of male versus female fingers used in my rectal probes, radioactive wires being pushed through my nether regions and up into my prostate (how can you not have fun with that!), the sweaty hot flashes, and hair and muscles disappearing from my body like puberty in reverse. It’s probably a coping mechanism so that I don’t become despondent, but I don’t want to minimize the trauma.
Humor helps me take a deep breath and loosen cancer’s tight strictures so that I can see the reality of my situation clearly, free of speculations about my future. I don’t want to wallow in despair or allow fear to rule my heart. Humor reminds me that it could be worse, although on some days it’s hard to imagine how.
At the same time, even though dealing with cancer took up much of my time with the treatments, I know that it’s not everything going on in my life. There are good things that happen every day that have nothing to do with cancer. Like dark chocolate. Long walks at dawn. The mmmmm-yeeessss of ripe avocados. My cats who like to cuddle against my leg on the couch. There are people to love, and people to care for who are hurting, and I don’t want to get lost in self-pity. A little wallowing is fine. Every Tuesday morning from 8 to 9 in a quiet corner of the woods where people can’t see me cry.
The first cancer essay I wrote came out sounding like a standup comedy routine because everything my oncologists were telling me had a maybe-this or maybe-that scenario. Like, I may have constipation or diarrhea from the radiation, which seems like a rather big swing of the poop pendulum. I may lose weight or gain twenty pounds because of the anti-hormone drug. I may be nauseous or perhaps I won’t. My high-risk, aggressive cancer might metastasize, but it also might not. So why let myself go down those rabbit holes? On some days it feels like I’m attached to a bungee cord that is pulling me between the two.
You would expect that oncologists with years of experience would know exactly what is going to happen to every cancer patient who has the same type of cancer and same diagnostic numbers, but everyone’s body is different, and that is the X factor that keeps things interesting. Some patients come in fit, while others really need to eat better and begin a serious exercise program.
One’s genetics are also a factor, and not all patients follow instructions well or take all their medications. It’s trial and error. How MY body responds is the bottom line. Medicine is not an exact science, even though we expect precision and complete solutions. It’s trial and error. Medicine is as much an art as it is a science.
When doctors were busy doing things to my body, they ignored the rest of me, and my mind sat on the side observing them and cracking jokes. I called that first cancer essay “Once Upon a Prostate,” like the fairy tales that start out “Once upon a time ….” But my cancer story wasn’t the sanitized Disney version where all of your dreams come true. It was closer to the real-life versions by the Brothers Grimm that told the truth about the horrors that happen in real life.
I detailed the trauma of cancer and its treatments in the essay, but it was also tongue-in-cheek because if I didn’t know what was going to happen, why not have fun with the uncertainty. Why stop living before I’m forced to? It helps to live with a bit of Alfred E. Neuman — “What, me worry?” Worry doesn’t cure cancer.
I appreciate when cancer writers step back from their suffering for a moment and reflect on their experiences, share a bit of wry wit, a sparkling cup of humor, and affirm that while cancer may have us in its eagle-claw grip, we are more than this and have some control over the outcome of our lives.
So far, the funny cancer people I’ve found include Miriam Engelberg, Gilda Radner, Thomas E. Kennedy, Brenda Elsagher, and Marisa Acocella Marchetto. I’ll talk about the latter three people in the coming weeks. Undoubtedly there are more people out there who are having fun with their cancer, and I can’t wait to meet them.
© 2026 Mark Liebenow
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