I'm allowed to be funny

In this morning's newspaper advice column (go to the second question), someone wrote in and said that she was someone living with cancer and had lost her mother to cancer and used humor to cope - and that offended someone. Who is this moron (and I use the term loosely)? The person who is offended I mean. The person who wrote in is sane, normal and intelligent because they questioned the 'moron's' thought process.

If us lucky people with cancer couldn't use humor, we would be boring. And depressed. And no fun whatsoever. We would need (more) therapy. We would be fat(ter) and lazier. We wouldn't be having fun with life which is a big part of living.

I use humor to cope because I can't do it any other way. I refer to us as the ones 'lucky enough' to get cancer because if I look at it any other way, it would be depressing. And that would suck. Besides it puts us in some sort of elite list - which makes us special. And we need to be special damn it. We would prefer not to have oncologists on speed dial or have their email addresses memorized.

Go Google the term 'laughter is the best medicine' and you will find numerous results - and many are based on medical studies (because we needed more medical studies) to prove that it is true. Where would life be without humor? Kind of boring. Was cancer supposed to suck the life and humor out of us? With a cancer diagnosis are we supposed to go sit in a chemo waiting room for eternity? Now that would be a real hell.

I'm allowed to be funny. I just hope other people think I'm funny. Sometimes I wonder if I am....