Laughing and Coughing at Yourself

We’ve all heard about Irish funerals. Nobody is crying and only laughing is allowed. A year after I started doing stand up comedy, I was at a relative’s wake and was asked to tell some jokes. I didn’t know if it was the right setting to make a joke of any kind. The man died of ALS and I was just a little uncomfortable making jokes. I tried, though!

(Oh, and if you’re wondering what ALS is, let me quote Christopher Moltisanti of The Sopranos for you when he said, “You ever think it’s a coincidence that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease?”)

At that point, most of my jokes were jokes about college, stories of growing up, and my social life (I was single at the time and it was awful, so I had some semblance of material). It wouldn’t be a few more months before I realized this simple fact: people want to hear about what makes YOU different.

There’s a dime a dozen comics who do political humor, jokes about being single, and jokes about growing up. Not many people can do jokes about the terminal illness that’s killing them. For whatever reason, at an open mic in Manhattan, I started doing jokes I wanted to do instead of doing jokes I thought people would want to hear.

As much as I wanted to relate to people and as much as I still struggle to relate to people, I felt that people with terminal/chronic illnesses deserved to have a voice that wasn’t so damn somber. People think we’re all in our hospital beds, isolated at home, or that we’re too tightly wound to not take ourselves lightly. Yeah, some days that’s true.

What I do know is that we want to laugh at ourselves as much as we don’t want to be seen as charity cases. There’s a fine line between laughing with someone and at someone. I want to teach people the difference, because I want to relate to a normal person without them feeling like they’re superior to me.

Here’s a funny story: I went septic two years ago and wound up in the hospital.

Okay, putting it like that isn’t funny, but hang on with me here.

People with CF, we all go to the bathroom too much. Nothing any of us can do. Even though I go to the bathroom a lot, I will go so far out of my way as to not be seen in the bathroom. My eternal fear is being attacked, one way or another, while I’m in a public bathroom. I don’t want people seeing me in the bathroom, doing my business, and to think to themselves that this is an opportune time to enact mischief.

Anyway, here I am in the trauma center of the hospital, coming to my consciousness. I had just blacked out after my heart hit around 200 bpm’s (Around the same number of bpm’s as Outkast’s “B.O.B.” I believe). The nurses prior to that wanted a urine sample. I was in a lot of pain. I could not move to a bathroom. I was not going to pee my pants. I was not going to let people watch me pee in a cup.

Now, I am in the trauma center, just coming to consciousness, when I hear the faint voice of a nurse saying, “Okay, Mr. Ryan. We need that urine sample.” Fast forward two minutes later, I am missing my pants and being held up by two nurses as three other nurses watch me pee into a cup. In that hazy moment, I realized, “This is actually pretty funny. The guy who hates peeing in public because he doesn’t want to be seen, is peeing in public with at least five other people watching.”

We often talk about representation in media and what that entails, good and bad. A few years ago, “Five Feet Apart,” came out. It was a movie about cystic fibrosis. As glad as I was that CF was being represented in the media, I cringed that it was using cystic fibrosis as a plot device. I didn’t care that the actors didn’t have cystic fibrosis. They’re actors and their job is acting — not being themselves. As much as I had some issues with the film, I have to concede that even this bit of representation did good as more people were aware of CF.

I know what I want to title my first book or hour of stand up comedy. I want to call it, “Luxuries of the Sick.” For me, while I am sick with an illness, it has given me a luxury that I wouldn’t have if I didn’t have cystic fibrosis: perspective of the bigger picture. Life is a luxury and is something we shouldn’t take for granted. I don’t know how long I’m going to be here. CF might take me in the next five years, but I also might be alive into my 70’s and 80’s. I’m not saying healthy people don’t have this perspective, but it’s different when you’re sick.

My point is, don’t be afraid to crack a joke. We’ll laugh (and cough). Just think before you make the joke.