T.P. Mulrooney makes Smilow Cancer Hospital's Cancer Survivors Day a laughing matter
The entertainer strode onto the modest-sized auditorium stage, dressed in what to these color-challenged eyes looked like a familiar symbol of victory at one of the world’s greatest golf events, the Masters.
Surely that wasn’t a green jacket worn by comedian T.P. Mulrooney, who had come to entertain those assembled for the popular Yale Cancer Center & Smilow Cancer Hospital Cancer Survivor Day in Orange, Conn., last Thursday. No, my wife, Mary, would say later, it was more of a gray-green shade. Sure enough, it wasn’t quite the shade of the Masters champion’s garment spoils, but Mulrooney could have worn paisley, plaid or polyester and still would have symbolized triumph. It was simply his presence there in flesh and blood that was evidence of a victory he shared with many in the audience.
T.P. Mulrooney delivers a funny line at Cancer Survivors Day. (All Mulrooney Photos: Kate Eisemann Pictures)
The survivor of Stage IV throat cancer, Mulrooney was there to activate the crowd’s funny bone, to be sure, but like those who share his perseverance and fight over cancer, he was there to show a winner’s spoils: a new, healthy life saved from despair.
As I listened to Mulrooney rev up his dialogue--comedians are a combination ham and show-off--the thought struck me how much pleasure cancer survivors get from being a bit of a show-off, but they’re entitled that bit of narcissism when it means showing off your healthy self and your survival. I know the feeling. I survived Non-Hodgkins lymphoma. God, using my brother and donor, Jeff, and the most extraordinary oncologist, Dr. Stuart Seropian, with the staff at Yale Hospital got me through a bone-marrow transplant in 2002. I haven’t stopped showing off since. I’ll be age "15" on August 8, my stem-cell day.
The Cancer Survivors Day celebrates those who have made it through the misery of diagnosis, treatment and after-care, and the caregivers who were and still are supportive of this great miracle.
Following remarks by Charles Fuchs, the director of the Yale Cancer Center, and Tara Sanft, the director of Smilow Cancer Hospital/Survivorship Program, T.P. Mulrooney took the evening’s audience members to a place cancer had kept them from going: the freedom to laugh without being inhibited by the pain and worry that are a cancer victim’s constant companions. His night-club type show had everyone laughing—there aren’t many things better than hearing a spouse and/or a caregiver laughing with gusto. The travails of a caregiver can be a harsh burden too.
Mulrooney is a seamless joke and story teller, who works with the ebb and flow of laughs as he hears them returned to him after the punch line. He started stand-up comedy while a journalism student at Maryland, leading to exposure on Comedy Central, HBO, Showtime and clubs in New York and D.C. He kids, perhaps seriously, that his mother wanted him to be a priest, “no life and no money, but I still became a comedian.” Encouraging advice from comics such as Jackie Mason and Billy Crystal helped. When Mulrooney added golf to the routine, he took the role of the common-man golfer and became The Golf Comic, delivering quips on Golf Channel, Sports Illustrated, and at hundreds of corporate and charity events, including at the Ryder Cup, Players Championship, U.S. Open and the Masters. A sampler from May 4:
T.P. appreciates a stay at a plush hotel, but he’s used to a La Quinta Inn, which he says is Spanish for “behind Denny’s.”
Golf magazines don’t do him any good because all the tips come from really good players. “Like this one, ‘Fred Couples on how to sink those par-4 birdie putts.’ All the good golfers don’t know our games. I know how to sink the par-4 birdie putts. Rule No. 1, make sure it’s your third shot. You don’t sink many birdie putts when you’re on the green in 7. A lot of my birdie putts come from 240 yards out. I don’t think Fred is using a 3-wood on his birdie putts. Club selection may be my problem.”
“Nongolfers think golfers are all crazy because we talk to the ball.”
“A good golf shot for a bad player is one that doesn’t require a public apology.”
His tale of traveling to Ireland included characters named Declan, Murphy, Sheehan, Riley, Kelly, Tommy, Rooney and O’Brien. Not a Jones in the bunch.
Undoubtedly, while most cancer survivors would likely say there was nothing funny about their journey with cancer, the evening laugh-track concluded with a reminder that humor can be found, and be important for, a cancer patient.
Mulrooney described the radiation masks that made him look like a combination of Hannibal Lector and Johnny Bench, and observed how “chemo clarified life’s purpose: don’t throw up,” and, “there’s no crying in cancer, it’s all about hope.”
There are many origins on the Internet to the phrase “laughter is the best medicine.” As profound as that is, none of us survivors could have laughed our cancer away, we needed a place like Yale New Haven Hospital/Smilow Cancer Hospital to give us the right treatment.
From an evening out with my wife/caregiver, chuckling with T.P. Mulrooney, my takeaway was a bigger appreciation for the saying, “He who laughs last, laughs best.”
The event allowed attendees a chance to mingle and mix with various Smilow support groups and specialty programs with their services on display, including:
Survivorship Clinic at Smilow/Support Groups;
Smilow Screening & Prevention Program;
Smilow Cancer Genetics and Prevention Program;
Palliative Care Program at Smilow;
Onco-Cardiology Program at Smilow;
Integrative Medicine at Smilow;
Lilly Oncology;
Closer to Free Bike Ride at Smilow Cancer Hospital;
Dana Romanello- author of “Cancer Changes Some Things, But Not Everything”