Cancer on $5 a Day* *(chemo not included): How Humor Got Me Through the Toughest Journey of My Life

Cancer on $5 a Day* *(chemo not included): How Humor Got Me Through the Toughest Journey of My Life by Robert Schimmel. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780738211589.

In the spring of 2000, Robert Schimmel was riding high. Hed won the Stand-Up of the Year Award, his HBO special was a huge hit, and his sitcom had been picked up. And then it all came crashing down. Diagnosed with Stage III non-Hodgkins lymphoma, he was told he would have to undergo chemotherapy immediately. The sitcom was dumped and the fire of his white-hot career started to go out. But Schimmel never lost his sense of humor, his knife-like edge, and most of all, his passion to entertain. Indeed, it was his basic need to laugh-even if the only people around him were suffering from cancer and the room he was playing was the Mayo Clinic infusion center-that carried him through his ordeal. From his colorful banter with nurses and other patients during chemo, to his hilarious conversation with a wig salesman, going for the laugh was Robert Schimmels survival mechanism. Alternately laugh-out-loud funny and profound, Cancer on Five Dollars a Day is an honest account of how one mans face-off with a deadly disease helped him better understand himself.