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

by Robert Schimmel

  • Every time my children smile at me, it feels as though God is smiling at me.

  • I don’t want to die scared.

  • Beggars can’t be choosers. Yes, they can. They chose to be beggars.

  • To get closer to God, you have to get closer to yourself.

  • Are guys with big dicks ever concerned about their size?

  • I have to be a proactive parent.

  • Tune everything out for a few minutes a day and find peace of mind.

  • Fight negativity!

  • It’s hard to take everything with a grain of salt when you’re on a sodium-restricted diet.

  • Make today the most important day of your life.

  • Maybe when we hit a low tide emotionally, we need to look for all the good things about life, ourselves, our inner beauty.

  • People come up to me and ask, “Why don’t I ever see you on TV?” I tell them, “It’s probably because I’m not on.”

  I change my relationship to food.

  It begins with this card I write: Eat healthy. Appreciate your food and don’t rush through meals.

  I buy a couple of books by Dr. Weil. I read them both in two days. His books are full of wisdom and insight and connect with me deeply. Among other things, I’m struck by his suggestion that you should make a ritual out of eating. Seems like we’re always in such a hurry. It’s tremendously unhealthy to sit down at the table, shovel the food into your mouth, and race toward your next activity as if the world’s going to end if you don’t take that phone call right then.

  Take your time. Look at your food. Really look at it. And if you’re cooking, enjoy and experience each moment of the process, including picking out the food that you’re going to eat. Examine the tomato that you’re about to slice up and put into your salad. Smell and touch the lettuce you’ll be using. Cooking is very tactile. And, I discover, very sensual. Also, when you slow down, cooking becomes almost a form of meditation.

  I create a sort of mantra. I write on an index card: This food is good for me. It’s filled with vitamins and minerals and will nourish me. No more junk food.

  I really get into my food. I see everything, especially fruits and vegetables, in a whole new light. I’m awestruck by an orange—the shape, the color, the touch, the smell. I hold it close to my nose, take it in, and, I swear, I imagine the orange grove. I even imagine the seed from which the orange grew. I picture the soil with just a seedling popping through the dirt, then the rains come and the seedling grows into a tree and the fruit swells and ripens. I feel connected to all of that. I don’t feel alone. And I don’t feel separate. I feel part of life.

  Ray, a friend of my brother’s who I know casually, calls me up after I’m diagnosed. Ray is a nervous, ferret-faced guy who spent most of high school camped out in the corner of my brother’s room getting high and listening to Canned Heat and Pink Floyd. He speaks in a high-pitched nasally voice that sounds like a dentist’s drill.

  “Hey, man, I heard. I’m really sorry.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, man,” I say.

  “What a ream job,” Ray says. “You know, with the show and all.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sick yet?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “What are you doing for the nausea?”

  “Basically, throwing up.”

  “I hear you, man.”

  “My doctor says I can smoke pot.”

  Ray brightens. “Really?”

  “Yeah. He says pot helps with the nausea.”

  “I can get you some pot, man,” Ray says.

  “I don’t think so, Ray.”

  “I’m talking about some really good pot. Not the crap they sell in Compton, man. I’m talking about some serious West Side, rock star weed.”

  “I don’t want it, man. But thanks.”

  Ray’s dental whine revs up into ultrahigh speed. “Robert, please. Don’t deprive me of this. I want to do this for you.”

  “I don’t really smoke pot.”

  “But if it helps with the nausea, why not try it? Why not, man?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Robert, I’m begging you. I want to do this for you. I didn’t know what I could do. Now I know. Please. I just want to do this for you. Please let me do this for you. Please.”

  I feel as if Ray’s whiny voice is about to drill through my skull. At this point I’ll say anything to shut him up.

  “Okay, fine. I’ll try it.”

  “Oh, man, thank you so much. This really means a lot to me. I just want to help you, man.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ray arrives at my house early that evening. I answer the door and Ray bounds in. He throws his arms around me in a wrestler’s clinch, intermittently massaging my back in slow circles as if he’s kneading pizza dough. I’m unsure if and when he will release me. Finally I break his clinch. Ray nods solemnly.

  “Robert,” he says. “Man,” and bear hugs me again, nearly breaking a rib.

  He pulls away, wipes at a tear that’s trickled down to his chin, and slaps his right coat pocket. “Got the goods.”

  I lead Ray into my room. This whole evening is rapidly turning bizarre. It’s as if I’ve never left high school and I’m sneaking Ray in to smoke grass while my parents are waiting for me to join them at the seder table. Although in this case I’ve sneaked Ray in under Vicki’s nose while she’s in the shower. I close the door behind him.

  “You don’t know what this means to me,” Ray says. He pulls out of his pocket a small, folded-over plastic Baggie a quarter filled with pot and presses it into my hand. “Here, man.”

  “Thanks, Ray.”

  “That’ll be sixty-five dollars,” he says.

  I stare at him. “What?”

  “That’s how much it costs.”

  “I’m not giving you any money. I didn’t want it in the first place.”

  “You’re gonna stiff me? That is cold.”

  Ray inhales massively and crouches into a catcher’s stance. He seems frozen there, injured, betrayed. Now it appears that I have two choices: pay him or take the chance that he will stay locked in that position forever as if he were a potted plant.

  “Jesus, Ray.” I grab my wallet and fish out four twenties. Ray whisks them out of my hand like a train conductor.

  “I don’t have change, man,” he says whippet fast, pocketing the bills. “I’ll put the difference toward your next bag.”

  I wave him away. I’d like nothing better than for him to leave so that I can flush the contents of the Baggie down the toilet and crawl into bed alone with my spiritual self-help books and my nausea.

  “So let’s get high, man,” Rays says, popping up out of his crouch and cracking his knuckles so loudly I cringe. He reaches into another coat pocket and produces a pack of rolling papers. “Pass me the pot.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Rolling a joint.”

  This doesn’t feel right. First, I don’t even want to smoke a joint. Second, I definitely don’t want to share a joint with Ray. I’ve started chemotherapy, my resistance is low, and while I haven’t discussed this with Dr. Mehldau, I’m pretty sure he’d advise me against sharing a marijuana cigarette with a drug dealer.

  Ray finishes rolling the joint. He licks both ends, holds the cigarette up to his nose, and takes a long slow whiff. “Man, this shit is fine. Let’s fire this baby up.”

  From a pocket inside his coat (the guy’s got more pockets than Coco the Clown) he produces a plastic cigarette lighter. With a magician’s flourish, he flicks the lighter’s top, releasing a violent blue broosh that would make a blowtorch proud, nearly searing my eyebrows. Ray leans into the flame. He catches the joint’s fat end, inhales a mighty chestful, holds it in for an agonizingly long thirty seconds, then exhales a thick brown cloud that hovers Hiroshima-like over my bed.

  “Oh yeahhhh.” He’s grinning goofily, high already. “Come on, Bob, baby, let ’er rip.” Ray offers the joint to me, forbidd
en 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.

  “Imagine me and you, I do, I think about you day and night, it’s only right—”

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

  “So happy togetherrrr. And how is the weatherrrr?”

  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 t
here 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.