The Takeaway Part Two: Mentality and Humor

The Takeaway: Part Two

My memoir about the challenges of
life after cancer

Last week I went to Warwick's in La Jolla, the oldest continually operating independent bookstore in the country, to promote my memoir, Surviving the Cure: Cancer was Easy,* Living is Hard. I have to say, I had a great time talking about my journey and what I learned from it, as well as signing books for the audience, and now I want to share some of that talk with you.

In this three-part series called The Takeaway, I will go over the key messages in both my speech and my book. These concepts are not just for cancer survivors, but for everyone. Whether it's how you view the world, how you treat others, or how you treat yourself, anyone can take away meaning from the lessons of my story and apply them to your life.

In Part One: Support Matters, I addressed the need for cancer survivors to continue to receive support even after they enter remission. While battling cancer, many patients have a great deal of support from their community and medical team, but that support decreases drastically once someone is no longer battling cancer, and yet they continue to face complications as the result of their disease or treatment. It's imperative survivors continue to receive support so they can have the best lives possible.

In this section, I will address the importance of mentality in dealing with the challenges of life. Whether it be cancer, physical and mental side effects, or other difficult or traumatic events, the key to getting through the toughest times is how you decide to look at it.

Silver Linings and Funny Bones

There's a famous quote (one of my favorites) by the late great Yogi Berra, "Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical." Math aside, he's not wrong. And really, all of life is like that. Sure, it feels as if a lot of our existence if physical, a lot of our problems are physical, but really it's almost entirely about your mentality.

Crappy things will happen to you. It's as certain as certain can get, with few exceptions. Maybe you'll be one of the few lucky ones who goes through life and everything is rainbows and puppies and all that BS, and the worst thing to happen to you is you only win a ninety million dollars from the lottery instead of a hundred million. But if you're like most people, there will be difficulties, traumas, pain, loss. And when that happens, what are your options? That's the conundrum I faced when I was diagnosed with leukemia ten years ago. 

I saw only two possibilities: Let it crush me, or push forward. I could cry and sob and complain about how life wasn't fair—I think I'd more than earned that right—but what good would that do me? I'd just be miserable, lying in a hospital bed for months. That didn't exactly sound what I'd call "fun," so I chose the other option: Do my best to enjoy myself. Whether it was through silver linings or humor, I worked to ensure I kept away the dark specter of despair. 

It's hard to imagine finding silver linings with such devastating traumas such as cancer, but I did what I could to find or invent as many as I could. Little things like discovering Skittles taste about the same going down as they do coming up, reading get-well cards, and not having to take finals (getting cancer isn't the best way to go about getting out of finals, in case you were wondering). It's amazing how many things we can be grateful for when you really start to look for them.

But perhaps even more important than that was humor. I made a special effort to laugh out loud, or at least chuckle, as much as possible throughout my treatments. During the day, I watched old sitcoms with a nearly religious zeal—M*A*S*H, Frasier, Cheers, I've seen every episode at least twice, maybe even three or four times. I  read books I enjoyed and could make me laugh—primarily works by Sir Terry Pratchett (seriously, check him out). I played jokes on the nurses, like pretending my mom gouged my eye out with a spoon while feeding me Jell-o. Laughter kept the darkness at bay—the black moods, the depression. It's not easy finding humor during such trying times, but the effort plays a huge part in how you deal with life's hardest moments—it helps you survive.

The key to surviving and overcoming challenges is mentality. The thing to remember is that life doesn't dictate how it affects you, YOU dictate how life affects you. The only person with control over how you feel is yourself, and that's crucial in every aspect of life—good and bad. That's not to say it's easy, far from it, but ultimately it is your choice. And that gives you the power to decide whether challenges beat you down...or you rise above it.

***

Spreading the word about life after cancer is important. There are nearly sixteen million cancer survivors in the United States alone, and that number grows by a quarter of a million every year. With so many survivors out there, it is increasingly important that everyone—from the medical community to friends and family—finds ways to offer support once the cancer is gone. The more people realize what life is truly like for survivors, the greater the support we can give them, and the better their lives can become.

Please share this so we can get the word out about the reality of life after cancer and give survivors the quality of life they deserve.

Thank you,
Andrew Bundy


Part Three: The Only Failure is Giving Up
Life can be difficult, and often we feel as though we've failed. However, there is only one way you can truly fail: when you stop trying.

Surviving the Cure Excerpt: Humor Me

Hey everyone! I'm going to be putting out excerpts for my memoir, Surviving the Cure: Cancer was Easy,* Living is Hard, for the next few days.
(*relatively speaking)

Today scene comes from early May 2008, when my oxygen levels were so low it was causing neurological issues, and unbeknownst to me, my doctors had given me two weeks to live. But I had enough lucidity to know I needed to find a way to stay sane and keep me spirits up. Turns out, that way was humor.

Humor Me

I pranked people during my many stays in and out of the hospitals. But by far one of my favorites was the “fake injury” gag.

One of my favorite snacks in the hospital was Jell-O. It was an all-purpose food that required absolutely no energy to eat, which was good, because I wasn’t well enough to even lift the spoon up to my mouth sometimes. Most days Mom would have to feed me. My favorite was cherry. The red mush sometimes reminded me of gore, something I was now far too familiar with, but it gave me an idea.

“Can ya call the nurse in?”

“How come?” Mom asked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Jus’ call’er in.”

“And tell her what?”

“Jus’ that I need help with sumpin’. Cummon, it’ll be funny,” I giggled.

Suspicious, but with a smile at my rare laughter, she called the nurses’ station and managed to convince them to send over a nurse. “So what is it that will be so funny?” she asked.

I told her my plan. We’d make it look like I had sneezed while my mom was bringing the spoon up to my mouth and stabbed me in the eye. I would have my hand over my eye with bits of cherry Jell-O leaking out from between my fingers. I summoned up what remained of my acting prowess to sell the fake injury. Mom managed to stop laughing right before the nurse arrived.

When the nurse came in, I was groaning and holding my eye. The nurse’s face immediately drained of color and she shakily asked what was going on. “She got muh eye while she’s feedin’ me,” I moaned.

The nurse spun on her heels and muttered something about getting the doctor. She was almost out of the room by the time my frantic calls stopped her. “No, i’s okay! I’s jus’ Jell-O!”

Looking less than amused, the nurse came back. I pulled my hand away to reveal a perfectly intact eye, surrounded by a red stain, and an impish grin. “That wasn’t funny,” she puffed, but smiled with relief. Then she chuckled softly and shook her head. “You’re an odd one.”

Yes I was, and proud of it.

Sometimes the humor came from outside, such as a card I received from a class of kids taught by one of our neighbors. “I hope you get out of the hospital and Hell soon.” I laughed hard enough for it to hurt, but it was worth it. The amusement came with joy and made everything seem all right. Get out of Hell indeed. I now had a “Get Out of Hell Free” card. I know she meant “heal,” but beneath the laughter, I couldn’t shake the feeling that her card might be more accurate than she intended.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for more excerpts and updates on my memoir!

I'd appreciate it if you shared this with your friends. I'm publishing my book to share the rarely told story about what life after cancer is really like. With more awareness, more eyes (or eye, depending on if someone stabbed you with a spoon of Jell-O), on this issue, we can educate people about the difficulties facing survivors in a life after cancer, and be able to give them the support and quality of care they need to live rich, fulfilling lives.

Thank you for reading, and especially for sharing,
~Andrew Bundy

Top Ten Zen #9: Finding Joy

Hi blog,

We're almost to the end of our mini-epic series of Zenocity! (I don't think that's a word actually...) Just one more after this. I'm already feeling a little nostalgic. What a funny looking word that is...

Top Ten Zen

Andrew and Nick have compiled a list of Zen-like philosophies comprised firstly of a quote, an interpretation of said quote, and finally a story to drive their point home. This list can aid you in doing anything from completing a 100-mile race to surviving cancer, or obtaining any goal you set your mind to. 

Here are the previous posts for those who missed them:

1. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
2. Body follows mind
3. The faster you hurry, the slower you go
4. You are not bound by your past
5. Life is only available in the here and now
6. You are the author of every next moment
7. Your worst enemy lies within
8. Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them

Free sledding

"Find joy in every little thing."

The Survivor’s Take: When facing hard times, it pays to find things to make you laugh and smile. Problems don’t seem as heavy when you take them on with a grin and a giggle.

The Runner’s Take: Smile, look up and enjoy the scenery. Stomp on the flowers if they provide you better grip on the climb, but don’t forget to smell them!

Survivor’s Tales: Anyone who has been in the hospital will tell you it’s a pretty boring place most of the time. (It’s generally not a good thing when it gets interesting though.) So to pass the time, and also to keep my spirits up, I played practical jokes. My favorite involved a spoon, some Jell-O, and a very pale nurse. I was too weak to eat the Jell-O myself at the time, and after my mom missed my mouth once with the spoon, I got an idea. We set up, giggling like mad, and put on our game faces as we called in the nurse. Neither of us would specify exactly what happened, only that we “Needed the nurse to get in here right away.” A couple minutes later the nurse showed up and froze as she saw me clutching my eye, little bits of red Jell-O oozing from between my fingers. “She got me in the eye,” I groaned. The nurse turned white as a sheet and quickly spun around, muttering something about getting the doctor. Luckily she had a good enough sense of humor to laugh with us after we stopped her. Finding funny things to cheer you up, whether it’s something as simple as reading a joke book or something as elaborate as a harmless prank (harmless being key), will help get you through the tough times if you remember to laugh as often as possible.

Mountain Tales:  I was coming off of the backside of a notoriously difficult mountain pass. The descent was steep and covered in long patches of dirty snow. I watched as the runner ahead of me plodded down the top of a long snow chute. The runner suddenly slipped and started sliding off down the chute at great speed. I was worried and opened my mouth to yell out to him. But then all of a sudden, he recovered just before he would have careened into the sharp rocks below. He picked himself up and kept moving as if he’d meant to do it all along. Anxiously, I moved closer to the snow chute, plopped my butt down as I’d watched the runner before me do and swoooshh!! I was off lightning fast! Whatever material my shorts were made out of was much faster on snow than the runner before me. I was horrified but I smiled and laughed. The laughter was partially out of fear, partially from the adrenaline, and partially from the fun of getting to sled in the Pyrenees for free! For that brief moment, the competition and the race faded away. I shook off the snow from my shoes and smiled back up at the snow chute, happy to be alive.

How it probably looked to the nurse

Andrew would like to point out that he actually mentioned his story and talked about using humor as a tool to get through cancer treatments in a previous series of his, Awareness Week. The specific post was: Awareness Week: Surviving Cancer, where he mentioned five different methods that could be used to get through the rough treatments and dark times that come along with cancer and the after-effects.

Of course, just because we are sharing our own extreme examples does not mean that these philosophies are all strictly for extreme situations. We share these because they can be used by anyone in the proper situations and we invite you, dear reader, to take these helpful tips into the world to use as you see fit. Feel free to hoard them or share them with others. It is both of our hope that these do some good somewhere, and so we wish you luck in your journey of a thousand Zen-filled steps.

Nick Hollon
Andrew Bundy