Cancer on Five Dollars a Day* (*chemo not included)
How Humor Got Me Through the Toughest Journey of My Life
By Robert Schimmel
(Da Capo Press, Hardcover, 9780738211589, 224pp.)
Publication Date: January 2008
Other Editions of This Title: Paperback, Hardcover, Paperback
Categories: Diseases - Cancer, Medical - General, Personal Memoirs
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In the spring of 2000, Robert Schimmel was riding high. He’d 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-Hodgkin’s 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 Schimmel’s survival mechanism. Alternately laugh-out-loud funny and profound, Cancer on Five Dollars a Day is an honest account of how one man’s face-off with a deadly disease helped him better understand himself.
Robert Schimmel, named one of Comedy Central’s 100 Greatest Comics, has had Showtime and HBO specials, bestselling CDs, a Fox TV pilot, consistently sold-out club dates, and is a regular on both Howard Stern and Conan O’Brien. He lives in Los Angeles.
The 60-year-old comedian, who often joked about his own life in his raunchy stand-up routines, died Friday from injuries suffered in a car accident. Fresh Air remembers Schimmel with highlights from a 2008 interview in which he discusses his memoir Cancer On $5 A Day. More at NPR.org
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