Having cancer sucks. Ain’t no two ways about it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep your sense of humor and laugh along the way. Sometimes you laugh at jokes that you make and sometimes you laugh at your circumstances or what has happened to you. As for me, being a very sharp wit, there were many times I had people doubled over laughing. Well, OK maybe they weren’t double over, but I think a few did chuckle at my jokes. But this is a story that happened while I was in hospital. I wasn’t trying to be funny on purpose, and at the time, I didn’t see the humor in it, but in retrospect, it was funny.

I had my MOAS on Feb 18th, 2004. It was a 10 hour surgery with the heated chemo (no, this is not the funny part… it’s coming). When I came to, I had a breathing tube down my throat, about 600 tubes in various parts of my body and my hands were tied to my bed so I wouldn’t accidentally pull any of the tubes out. I don’t remember a lot about that time, but I do remember a feeling of complete helplessness. Since I couldn’t talk, I wasn’t able to tell the nurse what I needed (I think I needed a blanket), so she gave me a pen and paper to write with. Now, remember, my hands were tied, so I couldn’t see what I was writing. My penmanship is shoddy at best, so I can only imagine the chicken scratch I was creating, but somehow the nurse was able to decipher it and got me what I needed.

Now for the funny part. A couple of days later, my wife was getting ready to leave to go out to dinner with her parents and my parents (my parents came from OR to be with me, and my in-laws came from NC). Remember, I still had numerous tubes and Ivs attached to me, apart from being doped up on pain meds. Also, I hadn’t walked more than a few steps in days. Anyway, for some reason I told my wife that I wouldn’t be going with them. She looked at me quizzically and said, “Where do you think we’re going?” I said, “To the gym to work out. I’m not going to go with you.” She looked at me and said, “Uh, OK. You just stay here then.”

For some reason, I was under the impression that I was much better than I was and that if I wanted to, I could go to the gym (although, that wasn’t even where they were going.) One thing I learned about the pain meds you get in the hospital, they make you say funny things, even when you aren’t trying.

Got any funny stories of you own? Leave them in the comments section. We could all use a chuckle.