It's OK to Laugh When You Have Cancer

Learning to laugh during breast cancer takes practice, but with a little effort, it can become good medicine.

BY Bonnie Annis

PUBLISHED August 06, 2018

Bonnie Annis is a breast cancer survivor, diagnosed in 2014 with stage 2b invasive ductal carcinoma with metastasis to the lymph nodes. She is an avid photographer, freelance writer/blogger, wife, mother and grandmother.

There's an old saying about laughter being the best medicine that most of us have heard before, although no one really knows where it originated. Like most people, I'm inclined to believe it's been around for thousands of years and was probably taken from the Holy Bible which says in the seventeenth chapter of Proverbs, verse 22, "A merry heart does good like a medicine: but a broken spirit dries the bones." But no matter where the quotation came from, the evidence included in the verse has proven true.

Laughter can lighten a spirit and make a person feel better. I know this to be true because it has helped me.

Laughing in the midst of a serious illness doesn't quite seem appropriate, does it? But at times, it's the only thing that can help a person cope with a distressing situation. While no cancer is a laughing matter, finding humor in the center of difficulty – though it might seem an impossible feat – is not only possible, it's probable. When I was diagnosed with stage 2B invasive ductal carcinoma, there was little to chuckle at. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I'd just been given the most dreadful news of my entire life. It felt like the ceiling of my world had just come crashing down upon my head. I had no idea how I was going to get through the next day, and the weeks and months that followed.

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