The Five Best Things About Getting Cancer, According To Someone Who’s Had It. Twice.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Cancer sounds like less fun than being trapped in a lift with a flatulent man and a TV loudly playing Sex and the City 2 on repeat. This is an accurate assessment. Still, it’s not all doom and gloom. Played the right way, your time in the cancer grist mill can be an edifying and educational experience.

As someone who’s had cancer twice – first at 11, second at 22; at 33 I plan on exploding at a party of friends and loved ones, just to really drive the point home – I thought I might share some of the things I’ve learned over the years.

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#1. You Cannot Do Anything Wrong

This is not an overstatement. Lance Armstrong headed up an international doping ring at the highest level of one of the most closely scrutinised sports on the planet while achieving things that no mortal man should have been able to, and it still took them more than a decade to crack wise to the fact that something might have been a little weird about that whole picture.

Then there’s exhibit B:

Getting cancer gifts you with a temporary moral infallibility that may as well have come from a flashing star in Mario Kart. As my brother told me one night, “At this point you could probably kill a man and get away with it.”

You soon discover that merely getting out of bed on a given morning is pretty much all that is expected from a cancer patient by wider society. Actually achieve something of note with your day, and you’re essentially Mandela himself. This effect is so profound that it is quite jarring to come back to regular life and have to actually, you know, do stuff. “Geez, life was easier when I had cancer,” you might find yourself thinking… Or not.

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#2. You Have The Power Of Life And Death Over Every Conversation Ever

Many people see the “I have cancer” reveal as something to be feared, but I prefer to think of it as an opportunity to really stamp your authority over the slowly dying chitchat in front of you. Nothing reinvigorates a discussion about the weather or traffic congestion more than a slyly dropped revelation that one of the conversational partners needs to consider their mortal predicament on a daily basis. Just watch their eyes widen, their breath quicken and enjoy the turn to eject-button sentiment such as “Oh, that’s a shame”; “My second-cousin’s cat got cancer once”; and “Best of luck!”

Once, when I was having a treatment at 22, I was out at a party when a 19-year-old guy cradling a bottle of cleanskin white bounded up to me and started the conversation by pointing at my hairless scalp and saying, “Look, I’ve gotta ask. Do you have your hair like that because you’re going bald or because you think it looks good?” Anyone who is not instantly grabbed by the immense comic possibilities afforded by this situation is dead inside. I let the moment hang for a few seconds, just enough time for him to wobble unsteadily on his feet, and then: “I have cancer.” There’s no hyperbole in saying that this was one of the true highlights of my year/life.

Yes, when you have cancer, it’s all about the small victories.

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#3. Say Goodbye To Your Phobia Of Vomiting!

For the twelve months that I was having chemotherapy at 11, I would vomit somewhere between three and four times a day. We had kidney dishes hidden under every item of furniture in the house because the need to vomit would arise with some rapidity and no provocation, and it was a damn sight more convenient than having to get to a nearby sink. Some mornings I’d wake up, have a spew and then get dressed and go to school.

By the end of treatment, vomiting was of as much note as defecation, a feat that during that year I engaged in, on average, less than vomiting.

Here is a visual representation of those 12 months of my life:

I’m willing to admit that unless your job description involves the phrase “ipecac tester”, being able to vomit essentially on cue is not the most applicable everyday skill. But on those occasions when it does come up (so to speak), it’s nice to be able to just pump one out and get on with your life.

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#4: Sympathy Sex

It exists.

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#5: You Get To Make Jokes That Nobody Else Can Make

In retrospect I feel quite sorry for my long-suffering friends who, uniformly excellent in their treatment of me, would repeatedly have to endure one or another of my hilarious cancer routines. A personal favourite was to wait for them to start complaining about a minor physical ailment, at which point I’d place my hand on their shoulder, stare deep into their eyes and say, with deadly seriousness, “Maybe it’s cancer…” Instant laugh riot.

From a comedy perspective, cancer is like being awarded your own ethnic minority. You’re like the Wog Boys, but not, you know, soul-crushingly awful. Being in the infancy of a stand-up career when I was diagnosed at 22, I realised pretty quickly that as a white, middle class guy from Perth’s well-to-do western suburbs, cancer made for one hell of an angle.

And having now exploited it for both a Melbourne Comedy Festival show and a just released comic memoir, I sometimes have the unsettling feeling that getting cancer twice may in fact have been the best thing to ever happen to me. And if that’s not something that only someone with cancer could say, then I don’t know what is.

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Luke Ryan’s comic memoir, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Chemo, is in bookshops now, via Affirm Press.

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Luke Ryan is a writer and comedian. He has written for The Age, Smith Journal, The Lifted Brow, TheVine, Crikey, Kill Your Darlings and many more, and tweets from @lukeayresryan.