Cancertainment Revisited: Writer Iva Skoch on NPR's Fresh Air

In July, Iva Skoch wrote an amazing piece about cancertainment, the practice of dealing with a cancer diagnosis through comedy, happy hours, and online chat rooms. The piece was phenomenal, all the more so because Skoch herself was a survivor of colon cancer. In the piece, she wrote:

Last year, a genetic test revealed that my mother and I are carriers of the Lynch syndrome, an inherited gene mutation that causes not only significant risk of colorectal cancer (check), but also cancers of the uterus, ovary, stomach, small intestine, hepatobiliary tract, urinary tract, brain, and skin. So, aside from breast and lung cancers, I'm well suited for a BINGO on my oncology scorecard...Still, I have always joked about cancer, often to put other people at ease. At times, making jokes feels just as thin, forced, and fake as those HANG IN THERE kitten posters. But often, the reality is so overwhelming that all I can do is laugh.

I loved her piece: its honesty, its humor, its excellent reporting. As it turns out, I'm not the only one. On Tuesday, Fresh Air host Terry Gross spoke with Skoch and one of her sources, Kairol Rosenthal, author of Everything Changes: The Insider's Guide to Cancer In Your 20's and 30's (Wiley, 2009). People in their 20s and 30s with cancer are of particular interest now that the health-care debate is broiling: this generation is more likely to be underinsured, to work freelance or to move from job to job with superexpensive COBRA premiums in between. Then, of course, there's the total buzzkill of having cancer in your young, sexy, freewheeling days, as Skoch described to Gross on Fresh Air:

When you're in your 20s and 30s, you stick out. When you come for radiation of chemotherapy, you're surrounded by patients in their 50s and 60s, and no one knows how to talk to you. I've had people ask me repeatedly about what I eat, because when people hear colon cancer, they think, "That's the cancer you get from bad eating." I'm 29, I'm an athlete, and it made me feel like people were always trying to blame me.

The entire interview is a really interesting, thought-provoking listen, as is the original piece. 

We also interviewed Skoch after the piece; click here to learn about her perspective on cancer, humor and the meaning of life.