Cancer Comic Strip

Hats off to the "Sixth Form" (US equivalent - 11th and 12th grades) pupils at the Sir Henry Floyd School in Aylesbury, near London, England, for pledging to make prize idiots of themselves all next week to raise money for breast cancer charities.

Activities planned include wrestling matches with all combatants wearing fat suits ...
the boys performing their own version of "The Full Monty" strip routine ... a "gunge the teacher" session (which teacher can afford the time off afterwards to get all the goo out of his/her hair?)... various sponsored anatomical bits being shaved and/or waxed ... and lots more.

But why breast cancer?

"We had a vote in every year's assembly and breast cancer won outright," said organiser Oli Lacey. "People clearly wished for that charitable cause to be supported."

And when I asked my son Tom Webb (who just so happens to be a 6th form pupil at the school) if I could look forward to hearing about his wrestling exploits in a fat suit, he replied "nah, mum, I'll be busy doing the sound and lights for all the events."

Sometimes it pays to be a behind-the-scenes techie...

Not surprisingly these events are not open to the public, but if you want to lend your support have a look at their Facebook page.

To whoever owns the copyright of that fat suit pic - thank you for supporting us by letting us use it.

With Darren Couchman's book on testicular cancer still fresh in our minds here is a gag that caught my attention...

Two women were playing golf one sunny Sunday morning. The first woman teed off and watched horrified as the ball flew at four men who were playing the next hole. Her ball hit one of the men extremely hard and he instantly stuffed his hands into his crotch, fell to the ground and began rolling around in agony. The woman raced across to the man and apologized profusely.

"Please let me help - I'm a physiotherapist and I know I could relieve the pain for you," she said with deep concern.

"No, no, thanks, I'll be alright...I'll be OK in a minute," he gasped, still lying in fetal position with his hands clasped together at his crotch.

The woman then took it upon herself to ease his pain by massaging his groin. After a couple of minutes she asked, "does that feel better?"

The man looked up at her and replied, "Yes, that feels really good, thank you. But my thumb still hurts like hell."

Picture borrowed from 2NewsTV of Boise, Idaho. Many thanks for its loan.

So sad to learn of Jade Goody's death today, the UK's Mothering Sunday of all days. Whatever you may think of her behaviour in the past, she has created significant awareness of cervical cancer, particularly in younger women for whom it is a serious threat.

I think it's only fair to say that Jade's illness and its resultant publicity will save many lives in the future, and she is to be admired for that.

As this is, after all, a humorous blog, let's say goodbye to Jade with a picture of her when she was laughing and in good shape. She was a good publicist and a very brave cancer warrior.

(Pic borrowed from the internet, thank you to whoever owns the copyright.)

I have just finished reading a very funny, very poignant and very helpful book about testicular cancer by Darren Couchman - it's called "One Lump or Two? A humorous story of one man's fight against testicular cancer."

Even though I'm not a contender for this brand of cancer (although my son swears I must have grown balls when single-handedly I kick all his drunken friends out of the house at 3 o'clock in the morning) I found the book highly entertaining and very moving in places. Well worth a read for all men and their partners. Click on the title or Darren's name for more information.

And while we're still in a testicular mood, one of my funniest moments recently was when I checked out YourNutz.com ... had me rolling around on the office floor, it did. However I laughed even more when a friend in Wisconsin told me that it's not a joke - in the US plastic or chrome balls have replaced furry dice as THE thing to dangle from your rear-view mirror. I wonder if their next product will be tinsel-adorned scrotums (scrota?) to hang on your Christmas tree?

Yours in a spherical frame of mind .... Sz

I hope you will be fearfully impressed to learn that I have been nominated and approved as patient representative for the Urology MDT (Multi-Disciplinary Team)at our local hospital.

While chatting to our new Lead Cancer Nurse - a delightfully pious and kindly soul - about this a few days ago I happened to mention that not only my consultant surgeon (who gives me regular cystoscopies, a.k.a. "pokes and peeks" into my bladder) but also the nurse practitioner who administers my intravesical (i.e. up my wee-wee hole) BCG maintenance instillations for the bladder cancer were to be my co-workers in this group.

Was I, she wondered, "comfortable" with that crossover of relationships?

"Absolutely!" I warbled. "For once it will be a nice change for those two to talk to my face."

Poor nursie. She couldn't help but burst out laughing as did everyone else within earshot. Humour within the medical bureaucracy? Perish the thought....

This post on Jeanne Sather's wonderful blog, The Assertive Cancer Patient, had me rolling around.

I'll never be able to chew gum with a straight face again.

How's everyone this chilly March?

Many thanks to my good friend Laurence H. who sent me some musings about colonoscopies by the wonderful Dave Barry, whom I hope won't mind me sharing this with you now. If you've never had a colonoscopy before and are due to get one done, take a deep breath before you start reading.

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"I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.

I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons.)

Then you have to drink the whole jug.

This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but: have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy ' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that. Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over on my left side,and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate.

'You want me to turn it up ' said Andy, from somewhere behind me. 'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood. Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that it was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ."

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And still on the subject of colonoscopies...

Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous... A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. 'Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!
2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet '
3. 'Can you hear me NOW '
4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?'
5. 'You know, in Arkansas, we're now legally married.'
6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?'
7. 'You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out...'
8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!'
9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!
10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.'
11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?'
12. 'God, now I know why I am not gay.'

And the best one of all.
13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head was not up there.

I've been doing the rounds of the internet looking to see what new jokes there are about the Beast and I have to say, I find some of them disappointing.

There's a big difference between having a good laugh about some of the things that happen to you when you have cancer and/or care for someone who does, and actually making fun of the disease itself.

There was one gag I thought was reasonably funny (and it appeared on several websites)...

Top 10 Ways to Know You are a Cancer Survivor

10. Your alarm clock goes off at 6 a.m. and you're glad to hear it.
9. Your mother-in-law invites you to lunch and you just say NO.
8. You're back in the family rotation to take out the garbage.
7. When you no longer have an urge to choke the person who says, "all you need to beat cancer is the right attitude."
6. When your dental floss runs out and you buy 1000 yards.
5. When you use your toothbrush to brush your teeth and not comb your hair.
4. You have a chance to buy additional life insurance but you buy a new convertible car instead.
3. Your doctor tells you to lose weight and do something about your cholesterol and you actually listen.
2. When your biggest annual celebration is again your birthday, and not the day you were diagnosed.
1. When you use your Visa card more than your hospital parking pass.

Here is a selection of sites with cancer jokes - click on the name to take a look:

Lawrence Wray

The Furry Monkey

Learning Place Online

Phoenix 5 (prostate)

Green Bananas Cancer Blog

...and so-on; today there are more than 9 million entries on Google when you search "cancer jokes." Seems it's the same couple of dozen that keep appearing though.

What do you think about these jokes? Please add your comments here - I'd love to know your views.

SUZE

...latest conversation with previously-mentioned gorgeous urologist who is treating me (in the UK) for my bladder cancer...

Me: Would you like me to send you the latest stats from the USA on BCG treatment combined with Interferon?

Him: Yes, by all means, but...

Me: ...but what?

Him: You know what it's like in this country, we're always the last to get approval for drug treatment when there's a cost attached to it

Me: OK, but evidence in the US is stacking up in favour of this treatment as it seems to wallop the be-jaysus out of even high-grade bladder cancers with substantially more success than BCG treatment alone

Him: All fine and dandy, but you know what the system is like

Yes, I do know what the system is like. It does not amuse me.

Just back from the 6-monthly "poke and peek" for the bladder cancer and have settled myself very carefully at the computer.

Whereas on the previous occasion all my gorgeous, handsome Nigerian surgeon did was to poke, peek and retreat, this time it was poke, peek, spot small polyp/tumour (been sent off to histo), insert knitting needle, chop out lump, insert branding iron, cauterize.

By this time my eyes were watering so much the tears could have extinguished a forest fire.

And coincidently, the said Nigerian hunky surgeon grinned while cauterizing and asked, "can anyone smell burning?" Raucous laughter all around - from the nurses, anyway.

I was in and out of the hospital in exactly one hour, as opposed to a whole day had we done it conventionally. Much more convenient. But I have to admit there were times while the Nigerian hunk was prodding with the red hot poker that I thought fondly of spinal anaesthetics. Very fondly.