Prose To Go

When humor writer Erma Bombeck set out to write a book about kids surviving cancer, she didn't expect to hear them talk about anything but despair. After all, they had been tapped on the shoulder by destiny and told, "We interrupt this life to bring you a message of horror."

She visited a camp for these kids in the late 1980s, when cancer was still considered a death sentence. Parents, teachers and adults in the grocery store would stare at these bald children in horror and shock.

The children, however, had other ideas. They talked about friends who did drugs. An 18-year-old man with friends on drugs told them: "You wanna do drugs? Do chemo for a year. It'll give you the same effect and make you feel just as lousy."

Although she'd been resistant to writing about the children, she was touched by their honesty and humor. Bombeck published I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise: Children Surviving Cancer in 1989. She donated all proceeds to the American Cancer Society and other health organizations.

"Humor and optimism had kept these kids in the mainstream of life," she wrote. "Perhaps laughing and believing in themselves was a major part of their survival. These were kids who had every intention of living long enough to go to Disneyland, drive their mothers crazy, live in bedrooms that should be condemned, go to the prom, eat pizza for breakfast and grow old."

The doctor becomes the VIP of any cancer patient's life. One girl sat on an exam table "popping jelly beans and gazing forlornly at a dead plant on the doctor's windowsill. Her observation: 'I hope he's better at taking care of people than he is his plants.' "

Our attitudes about cancer have changed tremendously since Erma wrote her book over 20 years ago. We no longer think that cancer is contagious. Most of us no longer call cancer patients victims. It's the second leading cause of death, but people are surviving over five and 10 years at phenomenal rates, thanks to early detection and better treatments. Children are surviving cancer at rates as high as 94 percent for leukemia and 85 percent for brain tumors.

One thing hasn't changed, though. Children use humor and their fighting spirit to cope with cancer. Like healthy kids, they live in the moment. They find ways to bring some sense of normalcy and control back to their lives with laughter. They don't usually moan and groan and ask God why they've been so tormented.

After all, they're going to grow their hair back, grow up and go to Boise.