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Posts Tagged ‘cancer and humor’

Second Comedy Class, Or, Maybe This Was Not Such A Great Idea Comedy Coach Tim Ferrell gave the guidelines for how the run-through and feedback session would work after each comic took a turn on stage.  I thought he got the guidelines from a kindergarten poster.  Everyone Gets to Play.  Try New Things.  Give Your [...]

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A different kind of post today!  Here’s a link to a story I told at SLANT, which is Portland, Maine’s Moth-like storytelling series.  For those of you who have been reading the blog from the beginning, this story will be familiar.  It’s the story of how I stumbled into stand-up comedy during a steroid-induced mania. [...]

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The Monday Before Surgery Mid-weekend, in one frightening shared epiphany, Ramona and I remembered our lack of legal status. “We don’t have a single piece of legal paper to document our” – I counted on my fingers – “twelve year relationship.” “Our mortgage?” Ramona suggested as a joke. But we both knew, in a medical [...]

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How Me As my lips closed around the plastic circle and water tipped from the Poland Spring bottle into my mouth and down my throat, the thought intruded: What else am I drinking with this water? Plastic might be my enemy. I never asked myself “why me.” I obsessed about “how.”  There’s no history of [...]

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Prologue Clutching the mike is what new comics do.  It gives the illusion of control.  Not a bad thing to want, standing on a stage and performing stand-up comedy for the first time.  After the opening joke explained away my bald head – “Never piss off your hair stylist” – the audience was in.  I [...]

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The Kindness of Strangers Betsy’s first words to me: “How’s the constipation?” I instantly knew she understood. Chemo, hair loss, fatigue, nausea – these were the usual things people talked about with those of us who had cancer.  Not shit. Not lack of it.  Not the immobilizing, bloated, out of control, backed up, doubled-over painful, [...]

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Uncle Tim’s Ring “Cathy, I wanted to talk with you.  Can you come outside?”  Tiny, sturdy Aunt Anne is halfway out the the rickety cottage’s banging screen door as she invites me to join her, away from the cousins, aunts, uncles, second cousins, sisters, brothers and mothers who comprise our annual Old Orchard Beach reunion.  [...]

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Third Game Plan Marty Linsky is unimpressed with my ambition to join Donald Trump on The Apprentice and his slightly raised eyebrows indicate only marginal amusement with my stand-up comedy endeavors.  I had not planned to tell him about either during our informational interview, but now, over coffee in the Portland International Jetport, I seem [...]

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Career Ennui Inbox stalking is never an attractive avocation.  Three days have passed since my brave little email swooshed into cyberspace, hopes clinging to it like an invisible attachment.  On day three, the awaited reply dings in. “Yes, I’d be happy to meet with you.”  Back and forth exchanges result in a date several weeks [...]

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December 26, 2003: Unexpected Invitation “You have cancer.” The space between my brain and my ears fills with foam, buffering sound.  The pastel exam room, small when we walked in, is suddenly cavernous, the doctor farther away on her swivel stool. Her mouth opens and closes and I think, I’m supposed to be catching the [...]

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