I want to be very clear about something.
Cancer isn’t funny.
It is a horrible and deadly disease. The only people who can make jokes about cancer are people who’ve actually had cancer. They can because they have lived the disease and have therefore earned the right to say anything they want about it. No one else gets that right and privilege unless it is conferred upon them by someone who has had it.
Ok, I realize that’s not some sort of official ruling. It’s sort of an understood rule that I’ve tried to put words to, and possibly made up just now. I tell you all that so that if I happen to seemingly make light of cancer in some way, you’ll understand the context and the ruling.
The ruling is stated above.
The context is… I’ve had cancer.
Twice.
No no, I’m fine. I’m not currently dying. In fact, I may be in the best shape of life. Or at least close to it.
And I have cancer to thank for it.
No, cancer didn’t make me healthy. It didn’t give me superpowers. I had to earn my health the hard way just like every one else.
Although that reminds me of a funny story.
Back in college, I played a lot of role playing games. Dungeon & Dragons type of role playing, except we rarely played D&D. What we played was the Marvel Super Heroes Role Playing Game. Everyone makes a hero, gives him stats and powers, and then a GM (game master) runs you through a story based adventure or campaign. I realize this has become the definition of nerdery and geekery, but hey, it’s a lot of fun, so don’t nock it till you’ve tried it.
Well, I made a bunch of different characters over the years we played, with different powers and stories. But they all had one thing in common. They all sucked. Not because the characters were bad, but because it seems I had discovered one of my real super powers.
The ability to role dice badly.
When the game relies on you being able to role dice well in order to do well, and you can role dice below average as a general rule, the game gets hard very quickly.
That was my first real life superpower that I discovered that I had.
The second was actually unintentionally predicted when I made my first character.
Twice.
I had never made a character before. Well, I had made ONE before, so I guess this technically was my second. But I don’t count the other one because it was made through random rolling instead of any sort of creative intent.
So, this SECOND character was tricky. I wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted something original. I didn’t want to make another Spiderman or Captain America. As we were tossing ideas around as a group we eventually started talking about what powers we would like to have in real life. At this point the conversation becomes very philosophical. What power would you have? What would you do with it? How would it affect the world and thought and Jesus and babies?
Or any number of other semi ridiculous discussions. And by “semi ridiculous”, I mean “totally sweet.”
Finally, one of us said, and I don’t remember which for sure, maybe me, “You know, if I ever had a power, it would probably be something really lame.” At which point another of my friends said something to the effect of, “Ya, that’s probably more like it. Your power (he said to me) would probably be the incredible ability to replicate your body’s cells at an increased and uncontrolled rate. In real world terms, we’ll call that ‘Cancer’.”
We all laughed. Yes, this was technically before I had cancer and therefore violated the rule I outlined above. But it was just so ridiculous and the power of irony was strong. If I ever were to get a superpower, it would be a horrible and often deadly disease.
That was predictor number one, which was followed immediately by my friend and I going, “Hey, that’s not a bad idea. What if your character has cancer, and…”
And there it was. History was made and one of the greatest characters I ever made was created.
It was also predictor number two.
Now, don’t misunderstand. I don’t actually believe these things were predicting my future as a cancer patient. I’m not that nutty. And if they were, I clearly didn’t pick up on it.
It did, however, become sort of a running joke amongst my friends. They would all get cool powers, and I would be the guy who got cancer.
And it was pretty funny, not because cancer is funny, but because of the irony. Because I was the guy who couldn’t roll dice well. I could roll two 10 sided die, which gives me 1-100 in terms of possible results (as the game limited the rolls)… and I could roll them 10 times in a row. In those ten times, 9 of them would be below 40 and 7 below 10. That’s what we call “bad rolling.”
So, therefore, if any of us got shafted on the powers, it would be me.
It was the running joke.
Till one day my doctor told me I had cancer. In that moment it stopped being funny. I actually had one of my friends tell me how bad they felt that we had made the joke for all those years.
In the end, it’s still funny. I can laugh and make fun of it now. It doesn’t bother me anymore. Life is life and it happens sometimes. But at the time, it wasn’t so funny. It suddenly became the awkward joke. We tried to be cool about it, but it didn’t always work. In fact the second time I was diagnosed with cancer I informed one of my friends by telling him, “So, hey. Guess what? My superpowers came back.”
He responded, “Oh ya? Ha! Good for you, bud. (then long pause as the meaning sunk in)… Oh. OOOOooohhh… oh… (awkward silence).”
It had seemed clever in my head.
What do I know?
It’s been almost four (seven now) years now since that second diagnosis. And now, I can make jokes and he can make jokes. The current joke is that I am the jar in which God keeps all his diseases. “Tony, could you pass the herpes, please? Thank you.”
No, I don’t have herpes.
It was really the only way we as friends could deal with the awful reality that one of us could die in some sort of untimely and horrible fashion.
And don’t get me started on the realities of chemotherapy. It’s just… well, it’s just bad.
Instead, let’s talk about how cancer made me a better person.
I was living a relatively isolated life at the time. My job made it easy for that to happen. Neither my wife nor myself particularly liked that part of my work. We were pretty out of touch and secluded from many of the people we used to know.
Once I was in chemo, however, I couldn’t work anymore. I didn’t have the energy or strength. At best, I could sit in front of my computer. Which is when I decided to do a few things. I started a MySpace page. Then eventually a Facebook page. I started a blog that shares the same name as this book. In fact, this book wouldn’t exist at all had I not came down with the cancer.
Don’t you love it when people put the word “the” in front of a disease name that doesn’t grammatically require the word “the” there?
It amuses me.
Anyway, I started getting in touch with all these people I hadn’t seen or talked to in years. Hundreds of them. And in the process I made some new friends as well.
I was writing in my blog because it allowed me to say what was on my mind and help some people at the same time. Maybe not much, but a little.
I discovered that there were all these people who were hurting in life for one reason or another, and maybe they didn’t have cancer, but maybe their life was worse.
Through this whole process, I realized I was to able help people in ways I couldn’t have before. I wouldn’t have known how. What I should say, or what I shouldn’t say… being able to empathize even if I couldn’t sympathize… knowing how horrible disease could be…
Once I was strong enough, I started visiting the cancer center I was treated at. I would talk to the patients. Find out how they were doing, if there was anything I could do for them, or if they just needed someone to talk to.
Chemo completely screws with your head. On top of having poison pumped through your body, you are dealing with all the emotional trauma of a life threatening illness. For some of these people, it was a direct death sentence. There are some people I used to visit with and take treatments with who didn’t make it.
There was the 30 year old mother of three.
There was the 18 year old high school football star.
I lived and they didn’t.
I was forced to start seeing my life very differently. I started seeing my purpose and place in the world differently. My priorities shifted and juggled and changed.
I’m pretty sure cancer saved my life.
I’ve come to realize what a selfish person I had been before. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still selfish. But I’m trying harder now.
I’ve also tried to stop lying to myself about who I am and what my place in life is. My illusions were shattered. I was always the healthy guy. All the kids who did drugs in school are all healthy. I was clean and sober my whole life and I got cancer.
Of course, it’s not that simple. That’s one of the illusions that shattered.
If I hadn’t had cancer, I might not be as healthy as I am now. I probably wouldn’t have tried very hard. But now, every moment of good health matters. Because now I know what bad health is like. I don’t want to feel that again.
Although, I also know that I have no control over it. I can be as healthy as I want, but it’s no guarantee.
And maybe that’s the greatest illusion that was shattered. I have no control.
I have no control.
I have NO control.
Keep saying it. Maybe it will sink in. Everyone intellectually will agree that so much of life is out of our control.
But we really don’t believe it. We have tricked ourselves for so long into thinking that we can control it all that we don’t know how to think any differently.
We think we need control. We grasp at it with all our strength. It’s how we deal with life and the things around us. We create a view of the world that allows us to shape it any way we wish. And while we do have a say over our lives and we can do so much more than we think, that’s not the part of our view that we cling to.
We cling to the part that brings comfort. We cling to the illusion of safety. We cling to illusion of comfort. The illusion of happiness. Things are so simple in our illusion. The danger and risk are minimal.
Everyone remembers 9/11. It was a horrible day. So many people died needlessly. There were so many things wrong with what happened, but do you know what most people took from that experience?
Flying is dangerous.
Seriously. Flying is dangerous.
Specifically, flying is now MORE dangerous.
Tell me, did flying get more dangerous? Or had the danger always been the same and now we just realized it wasn’t what we thought?
Those terrorists exploited dangers that had always been there. Those dangers weren’t new. They had just never been used that way.
Flying wasn’t and isn’t any more dangerous than it had been before. We just started realizing that we didn’t know what we were talking about.
In the end, we are like the guy in the move The Matix who wanted to get put back in. He saw reality for what it was and couldn’t handle it, so he fought to cling to his illusion by being put back in and having his memory erased so he wouldn’t have to know what reality was truly like.
Tell me, were the jokes we made about cancer in school suddenly more offensive when I had cancer? Or were the jokes always of poor taste and WE changed?
Or maybe it’s not the jokes that were wrong, but maybe it was our perception of the reality surrounding the humor?
I’m not offended by my friends joking about my disease. I joke about it all the time. I’ve realized cancer is just a thing that happens that I have no control over.
But real cancer isn’t the tumor you grow in our body.
Real cancer is the illusion that grows in our mind. It keeps us from seeing the way things really are. It keeps us from finding the flaws in our world view. It keeps us from even wanting to find the flaws in our world view.
It keeps us from wanting to change.
It keeps us from being honest with ourselves about ourselves and from desiring to do anything about it. It deceives us into thinking everything is fine and there is nothing wrong, or that the things that are wrong are something pointless and irrelevant and not the real problems in our life and views.
It keeps us from seeing the truth.
The truth is, physical cancer could still kill me one day, but no matter what, it has already saved me.
The truth is, it’s not the physical cancer I fear(although I do) as much as the mental and spiritual cancer that will most certainly kill me if I don’t allow my self to see it and destroy it.
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