Baldies' Blog began originally in the UK by a 26 year old journalist with a blood cancer on a mission to inform the world about bone marrow donation.

He has since died, and I took on the cause of making cancer care more transparent for everybody.

Cancer is a disease that will touch everybody through diagnosis or affiliation: 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed and 1 in 3 woman will hear those words, "You Have Cancer."

I invite you to read how I feel along my journey and
how I am continuing to live a full life alongside my Hodgkin's lymphoma, with me controlling my cancer, not my cancer controlling me.

I hope that "Baldies' Blog" will prepare you to handle whatever life sends you, but especially if it's the message, "You Have Cancer."

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Thursday, October 16, 2008

Does Cancer Have a Sense of Humor?

Even If Cancer Doesn't Have a Sense of Humor, there are things that can be done to make a serious situation funny. Laughter is the best medicine after all. I probably don’t need another hematologist. I need a jollyologist, to remind me what is so funny about my life.
Here are the basic reasons cancer jokes belong in the world:
Laughter can soothe and heal tender hearts. Not laughing—simply because your life isn't going the way you would prefer - gives cancer power to have greater control over your life than it deserves.
Everyone has the right to laugh as long as he or she lives. Who am I to deny anyone the kind of humor that helps them go through whatever it is they have to go through?
Even ordinary life of healthy people can become pretty grim if we can't make fun of the vicissitudes and vagaries that come our way. Some days the only way to get through is to laugh about the absurdity of trying to be in control of things over which we have no control. And some days that goes double when you have a serious, somber, grave, non-frivolous, solemn, grim, life-challenging illness
Laughter helps relieve sadness. It’s also a fact that cancer patients who take an extra step to remain happy (through anti-depressants) have lower relapse rates.
So I’m giving you permission to laugh at me, and laugh at yourself. Laugh it up people. Laughter makes the medicine go down.

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