Dark Humor and Cancer (and Harry Potter)

I have cancer. My best friend regularly insults my cells for their incompetence at reproducing properly. My family is delighted by my new resemblance to a baby with my shiny bald head and makes endless jokes about it. When I finished throwing up this year’s Thanksgiving dinner, the first thing my mom said was “I used your loofah to clean up, I hope that’s okay” to my cousin.  This dark humor might scandalize an outsider. Most recently, my dad and I were giggling in the ER when I couldn’t stop gagging during a strep test to determine the cause of my fever. I could see the nurses’ disapproval above their hospital masks. This is no time for merriment! You are sick! Act like it! Oh, please. I’m not giving the cancer the satisfaction of my panic. I will giggle. And it will be fine.

My response to “You can’t say that!” is why not? You should, what, respect the cancer? Cancer has no respect from me.  Laughing openly about something is kind of like spitting in its face. I’m not going to let cancer jokes offend me, I’m going to offend the cancer with jokes. As my guru Hermione Granger once said, fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself. When you bring humor into the situation you take away some of the fear. Riddikulus*.

I think this mindset can best be summed up (in Harry Potter terms) by the Weasley twins’ giant colorful U-No-Poo display in Diagon Alley even in the midst of the fear and darkness of the outside world. Because laughing is better than crying, because it is during the hard times that you need laughter the most, and as a “f**k you” to whatever is scaring you, Voldemort or cancer.

(I understand that this post is maybe hard to understand if you haven’t read Harry Potter. For which I’m sorry, but you should also be sorry because why have you not read Harry Potter? It will make your life better.)

Laughing about hard things doesn’t mean that I don’t take them seriously or that they don’t still hurt. Cancer can take a lot of things from me- it can take me away from my friends and studies, it can leech away my muscle tone and my mental clarity. But I will be damned if I let it take my spirit. I will not let it corrode my personality, and I will not let it take away my humor. I can’t control much about this whole process. But I can choose to laugh. As my other guru, Anne of Green Gables, said: “Life is worth living as long as there’s a laugh in it.”

So if you see me in the street, instead of being terrified of offending me or saying the wrong thing (which most people are around cancer patients), make a joke about my bald head. I promise it will be way more refreshing than pity. There is something so sweet in my friends and family’s refusal to treat me any differently because I have cancer. Cancer doesn’t need to be made into something sacred, something to tread lightly around. Cancer has enough power as it is. It needs jokes and eye rolls and lightheartedness and light. This philosophy may not be true for every cancer patient or person going through a hard time, but it is for me. So until next time, mischief managed.

*Riddikulus is the spell that dispenses boggarts, evil creatures that prey on fear. It is cast through laughter. Seriously, go read (or re-read) Harry Potter.