Forum Discussion

Summer_Prevails's avatar
7 years ago

Finding the unfunny funny

just wanted to vent these (what I found) funny exchanges I had recently. I had a choice about laughing or crying over them, so I just chose to laugh and run with that. 

So so I went to the chemo ward the other day to have my stupid monthly Zoladex injection. The nurse who did it was in her 20s, and was training another young woman nurse. So I’m sitting there waiting for my shot and nurse 1 says to the newbie:

”Zoladex is what we give to patients who have ER + B Ca, they stay on it for about 5 years, and it can cause some menopause-like symptoms like hair thinning and hot flushes...”

she says this as if I’m not sitting RIGHT there. I finished her sentence with: 

“....and insomnia, major joint pain, fatigue, depression, panic attacks....just to give you something to look forward to.”

and wow ypu could have heard a pin drop. The look of horror from newbie nurse. Poor lass. Grumpy menopausal women speaking the truth about treatment, gasp!!! Had to chuckle at her innocence and my grumpy non-oestrogenated jadedness clashing at that point. 

Then another day i was paying for petrol (account overdrawn by like $100, living my financial dreams) and the attendant sees my lympho compression sleeve/glove and smiles innocently and says “Is that to protect you from the sun?” I think he was about to congratulate me for being super sun smart. 

And i cheerfully said “No, it’s for a condition I have called lymphoedema. It’s an excess of lymph fluid in my arm that needs compression to manage. But it also does keep my skin safe from the sun! Have a great day.”

😂 you should have seen his poor little face fall when I said lymphoedema. You could just about hear his mind going WTF ? And the awkwardness that ensued. Had to laugh. I guess I have a pretty black sense of humour. It was the absolute clash of his knowledge versus the ugly reality of my life that cracked me up. 
  • I went to buy an eyeliner the other day and the lady at the counter said “ I love how you tie your headscarf it looks so funky. Must save time doing your hair?”
    ummm no I am having chemo I have no hair. 
    Well my $30 eyeliner then came with about $50 worth of cosmetic, skincare and fragrance samples 😆😆
  • @Melc503. How funny - have to find the silver lining. I went to my dentist post mastectomy with my drain in before I started chemo and ended up getting a free clean. 
  • That's absolutely awesome, @Melc503   WIN!

    And well done, @Kiwi Angel too!!  ;) 

  • Dark humour is my best friend. In Feb I had convulsions and a scan showed 'something in my head'. My husband looked at the consultant and said, 'Well, that explains a lot!' We both laughed and from then on referred to "my martian implant'. It took about three weeks to learn of the diagnosis 'benign'. My visit to the oncologist was referred to as 'my conversation with the martians'. A few friends have difficulty with our take on this **##!! situation, I'm sensitive to their feelings but dark humour has often been my life boat, my relief etc. I'd love to hear of more dark humour incidents.
  • Dark humour is a default that works for some of us, the patients.  
    Online there's a paper from the Journal of Pragmatics and this is part of the abstract

    Copy and paste from Laughing at cancer: Humour, empowerment, solidarity and coping online 

    Abstract

    In the context of cancer, humour and joking can still be seen as socially unacceptable. Yet people with cancer can find relief in making light of their often life-threatening situations. How and why they do this has received little systematic attention to date. This paper begins to address this gap by exploring 530,055 words of online patient–patient interactions on a thread explicitly dedicated to humour within a UK-based cancer forum.


    The website is https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216616301795




  • OK .... so is this where we start putting up some specific 'cancer humour'??  Dark & irreverent?