Working to win a struggle with breast cancer after having won a struggle against lymphoma doesn’t seem like matter for a comedy. But for Valerie David cancer matters and she fights it with comedy to show cancer patients they’re not alone in expressing feelings about it. As a genre, comedy is defined by having a happy ending. That’s what Valerie hopes for herself and other patients as she illustrates how acceptance of self, whatever cancer has done to affect self, can be positive and foster defiant humor. Breast cancer is Valerie David’s central subject. She discovered it on the 15th anniversary of being cured of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphona in 1999. On a holiday in Aruba, she hoped to celebrate with a special dinner and drinks and a super-special date. A joke was on her: the discovery of a lump just as she was about to have a great new masculine discovery need the condoms she’d brought along. Valerie’s struggles to find the right doctor and support of friends who’d share the hard to hear truth ended in her going into treatment. She took her disease as a “direct attack on me as a woman” and, not incidentally, still “wanted to get laid again.” Alternating between seeking understanding laughs at her physical changes and a few cheaper laughs at sexual jokes, Valerie describes her physical tests, her search for a right man, times of career disappointment, and differences in interaction with people. Just as she couldn’t stop gaining weight (a persistent problem), she couldn’t deal with her hair loss. She still relives many ER visits and nights when she couldn’t sleep without her teddy bear to hug (though — ha, ha — she’d give him up for a guy). She recalls learning positive things, such as that she didn’t need a mastectomy, she could stand up for herself against the medical establishment, and she could find work by expressing her feelings and helping others in situations similar to hers. Is Valerie David cocky? Yes, she glories in being so. Does she still need drugs and treatment? Yes, the kinds she really needs, some of which don’t come in medicine bottles or hospital rooms. Does speaking out help her? One can see her for one’s self: She performs her shows at many festivals, for many cancer support groups and research/treatment organizations, for theater companies doing short comedies or monodramatic plays. She can thank her director Padraic Lillis for the great help he’s given her to do so. Is she getting the sex she seems (perhaps too needily) to have kept looking for? Don’t ask; let her tell. She’s happy to tell how anyone who can ask by e-mailing pinkhulkplay@gmail.com or being part of her movement at pinkhulkplay.com.
