Cancer on Five Dollars a Day* *(chemo not included): How Humor Got Me through the Toughest Journey of My Life (15 page)

“Oh
yeahhhh
.” He’s grinning goofily, high already. “Come on, Bob, baby, let ’er rip.” Ray offers the joint to me, forbidden fruit. I take it, study the thing, then in what feels like slow motion, bring it up to my lips.

It’s been forever since I smoked a joint. Can’t even remember the last time. At least twenty years. Even then I was never a get-high-and-blast-Metallica type of pot smoker. Pot has the opposite effect on me.
Had.
I smoked grass and the world slowwwwed down. The world became ice cream and cotton candy. All the colors of the rainbow. Fluffy whipped cream clouds dancing. Candy cane striped poles instead of lampposts. Calliopes. Merry-go-rounds. Happiness all around.

Yeah. The Turtles. Forget Pink Floyd. Can Canned Heat. My getting-stoned soundtrack belongs to the Turtles. Hey, who doesn’t love the Turtles?

Oh, I’m high. I’m so high. I’m so fucking high. I’M SO FUCKING HIGH. I’M SO . . .
AHHHHH!!

I’m shaking. My pulse is pounding in my head. I’m burning up. Sweat pours off my forehead into my eyes, temporarily blinding me. My hands are quivering out of control. Tremors. I have tremors. I’m shivering. And I can’t breathe. Voices are screaming in my head. They won’t shut up. I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating! I’M SUFFOCATING!!!

I hear Vicki’s voice, far away, a distant echo. “Robert, what’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. These voices in my head. Maybe the pot was sprayed with something.”

My mother now, hand to her mouth. “Oh, God, he’s never going to be the same.”

“Ma? Are you here? The doctor said I could smoke pot, remember? I was just following doctor’s orders.”

“Robert, can you hear me?” Vicki gripping my arm.

“Hey, man, it’s not the pot.” Ray’s offended. “That stuff’s sweet. Mrs. Schimmel, have a taste. Seriously. Try some.”

“It’s not the pot,” I echo. “I’m having an anxiety attack.”

“That makes sense,” Ray says. “Because it’s definitely
not
the pot. You’re absolutely having a panic attack. Makes total sense. You have cancer, you could die, what’s it all about, Alfie? These thoughts have to fuck you up, man.”

“Ray, not now, please,” I say, pressing my thumbs into my forehead.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“You are really stoned, Robert,” Vicki says. “
Really
stoned.”

“Yeah,” I say. “No shit.”

“You have to come down,” my mom says. “You want a Xanax? I think I have one in my purse.”

“Yeah,” I say. “A Xanax would be good.”

My mother rustles through her purse, which contains countless cold remedies and an array of prescription bottles, one of which does contain Xanax. CVS pharmacy carries less medication. Why she has Xanax in her purse and how she knows it will sober me up are questions I don’t want to deal with, but I pop the pill, chase it with half a bottle of Evian, and fold myself into the living room couch. Vicki escorts Ray to a back bedroom where he’ll sleep off his high. Later she’ll call a friend or maybe animal rescue to retrieve him.

The Xanax does the trick. The pot high wears off, the Turtles fade away, and then, suddenly, a cliché—I get a huge case of the munchies. I head into the kitchen and swing open the refrigerator. Nothing but carrot juice, soy milk, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, caraway seeds, and a bunch of other useless, healthy food. I squat down to the freezer, yank that open, rummage through the shelves, and finally find pay dirt: three unopened boxes of ice cream sandwiches. I pull them out, stack them up, rip them open, and polish off two and half of the boxes standing over the sink.

Two days later, in Dr. Mehldau’s office, with him at my side, I step onto the scale for a second time. He shakes his head. “Amazing. You’ve actually gained two pounds.”

“Wow,” I say.

“And you had vomiting, right?”

“Record-breaking pukage. You would’ve been proud.”

“Well, right now you’re a medical miracle. You go on chemo and you
gain
weight. What’s your secret?”

“No secret. I just did what you said. I smoked a joint and ate a shitload of ice cream.”

“Be careful,” Dr. Mehldau says, his eyes widening. “That could lead to the hard stuff.” He ticks them off on his fingers: “Cakes, pies, doughnuts, muffins, cupcakes . . .”

Big cartoon laugh at his own joke.

You cannot fight cancer alone. This I know. To that end, I surround myself with people who are not afraid to talk about what they’re going through. You have to talk about it. Otherwise you give the disease power over you.

I once spoke to a guy named Ted who told me that he didn’t know where I got the strength to make fun of cancer. I corrected him.

“I’m not making fun of cancer,” I said. “I find comedy in some of the experiences I’ve had, but I do not think cancer itself is funny.”

“I have cancer,” Ted said. “I’m terrified all the time.”

“So am I. But I try to live in each moment, take each day as it comes. Today was a good day. I feel pretty good right now. That’s all I got. Today.”

“I just can’t get over the fear,” Ted said.

“You have to talk to somebody about that.”

“I can’t,” Ted said. “I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“You’re talking to me right now. That’s a start.”

In the end, I’m not sure how much I got through to Ted. My heart goes out to him and people like him who never get out of the denial stage. If you don’t talk about it, then you’re running from something that just
is.
You can’t deny it; you can’t outrun it. And I’ve found that the best people to talk to are those who are either in the same boat as you or have gone through it and survived. We all have to be realistic. But to beat cancer, you need to remove as much negativity as possible.

I think of Magic Johnson. He was diagnosed with HIV in 1992. Sixteen years later, he’s still opening up shopping malls and movie theaters and barbecue places all over Los Angeles. He’s a testimony to not giving up. It’s a fight. As Michael Landon said, “If I don’t beat cancer, I’ll die trying.”

Unfortunately, he lost his battle. I’m going for a different ending.

Finally, I laugh. Remembering what Norman Cousins said about the healing power of humor and seeing how people in the infusion center react when I tell them a joke leads me to seek out distraction in comedy. I get my hands on all the comedy albums I can find, starting with Steve Martin, Don Rickles, and Bill Cosby. When friends ask me what they can do for me, I tell them to send me comedy albums and DVDs. I listen to Lenny Bruce, Redd Foxx, Bill Hicks, Sam Kinison, Andrew Dice Clay, Bob Newhart, and Phyllis Diller. I watch Bill Maher, Dennis Miller, the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Jerry Lewis, and Mel Brooks.

I bring my albums into the hospital and share them with the people in my support group. I watch them get lost in their own laughter and I am inspired. I want to be part of their recovery; I want to help them feel
good,
even for a short time.

Because when you’re laughing, there is no other emotion in that moment except for joy. No anger, no depression, no fear. Just joy. Making somebody who is sick laugh seems to me to be the most important and fulfilling thing I can do.

I know what’s going through their minds. The worst, scariest shit you can imagine is playing nonstop:
My life is over
or
What did I do to deserve this?
or
How will I get through this?
and, most of all,
Am I dying?
I want to take them away from those thoughts. For in the moment that they laughed, in that one moment, they weren’t sick, and they weren’t afraid.

Cancer and I share a long and checkered history. We go back forty years, when I was diagnosed with a potentially precancerous, undescended testicle. That story’s coming up.

But on December 2, 1992, I was inducted into an exclusive society: the Fucking Unlucky Club. On that day my son Derek died from brain cancer. He was eleven years old.

People often called Derek an old soul. I agree. There was no doubt that there was something timeless about him, as if he’d been here before and was just passing through in order to deliver a message. And to change lives. He was an incredible teacher. I learned so much from him, not necessarily from the words he spoke, but from the way he acted, especially when he was at his sickest.

Despite his body being weak and frail from being ravaged by cancer, Derek was the strongest, most determined person I’ve ever met. I’m sure he didn’t seem that way at first, when you saw him lying in his bed attached to a million tubes. We fed him through a tube in his stomach and he lived with an IV that went straight into his heart. Many days he breathed inside an oxygen tent. I can’t imagine his physical discomfort, but he never complained and lived his life more fully than any healthy person I’ve ever known. He made every second count. He was full of grace and pride and humor.

He laughed, all the time. Man, did he laugh. He gave me the gift of being my most receptive audience. Sometimes I’d just look at him and he’d remember something stupid I’d said or something silly I’d done and he’d break up. He taught me to appreciate what I have and to live now, in the moment. My son Derek, age 11, cancer victim, taught me how to live.

Of course, it took me eight years, until I had my own cancer, to fully
get
Derek’s life lessons. Better late than never.

Here’s one example of Derek’s spirit.

He had just turned eleven and had had a couple of very good days. I’d just bought a brand-new Toyota Land Cruiser and wanted to show it off to him. Still had on the dealer plates. “Paper plates,” Derek called them.

It was a beautiful, warm afternoon and I sat on the edge of his bed, hanging out. I suddenly had this crazy idea.

“Hey, Derek,” I said. “You wanna go four-wheeling in the desert? We’ll take the new Land Cruiser.”

“Are you kidding? Sure.”

I leaned in and said just loud enough for the hospice nurse to hear, “I’ll even let you drive.”

The hospice nurse, a bull of a woman named Lana, said, “No way I’m gonna let you do that. You cannot take him four-wheeling in the desert. God knows what will happen to him out there.”

“What’s gonna happen out there that can’t happen here?” Lana started to object again, but I wasn’t listening. I piled Derek, his IV machine, and his oxygen tent into the Land Cruiser and we headed out into the desert. In Arizona, you can drive down a main highway and if you pull off the road, you’re right in the middle of the desert. Which is what I did. I pulled off of Scottsdale Road, turned onto Bell, and veered into a vast open patch of desert sand. The landscape shimmered in the heat. Here and there a cactus stood tall, a prickly sentry. Perfect spot for Derek’s first driving lesson.

“Okay, buddy,” I said. “You can drive.”

I sat Derek in my lap. He squirmed around, got comfortable, then stretched his legs down and made sure he could reach the pedals. Finally, he settled in.