Maureen Holloway's breast cancer story

Support from strangers
She estimates she got 2,000 e-mails those first few days – and they still trickle in more than three years later. This is the only point in our nearly two-hour discussion when her luminous green eyes moisten as she recalls the outpouring of support from hordes of complete strangers – people she accompanies on the ride in to work each day, whose commutes are made more tolerable by her wisecracks and impossibly infectious laugh.

"I can see where, if you've got [crap] in your life and you hear somebody who's supposed to be frightened and miserable just laughing her fool ass off, you kind of go, I can get through today. So that made people feel great."

In fact, she's not just a purveyor of humour. She is also a student of the craft, who at that very time was working on her master's thesis on women and humour in visual culture at York and Ryerson universities. One of her observations: "The general consensus, up until quite recently, was that women can't be pretty and funny. To be percieved as funny, women had to be fat, aggressive, loud or clumsy." She found that being temporarily stripped of her Irish-lass good looks was "strangely liberating; I could say anything." To any person who might deign question her on that, she takes a hands-on-hips tone and adds: "I can make cancer jokes, 'kay? You cannot possibly be more offended than I would have been back then. And I was, I think, funnier than I've ever been, that year."

Living positively
A daily dose of morning-show shtick was just as good for the patient: "One of the main reasons I had to work through it is I would laugh every day." But she is careful not to equate laughter with real medical treatment.

"I was aware then and I am aware now that laughter is not going to cure you," she says. "But if you're gonna die, better to go out laughing than spend the last year of life crying about the fact. The end is gonna come no matter what."

Off air, her quarterly MRIs continued, followed by reconstructive surgery (the third and final operation was completed last year). Thanks to all the resulting scars, "I look like a pirate without my clothes on," she says today. Now cancer-free, she can reflect on all the unexpected positives that ultimately turned her "annus horribilis" into a "year of miracles": a solidified marriage, closer relationships with loved ones, a lucrative contract renewal with Corus Radio and a fresh start in a new house where she never has to run to the bathroom to be sick.

She wishes it could be that way for everyone, that "you get a cookie at the end of your ordeal," but has learned that many people – including some close to her – have had their marriages break, lost their jobs or faced other repercussions as a result of illness. She has discovered that, although she hates having her hair long, at least for now she refuses to cut it because she knows what it feels like to go without. She's taken away other valuable lessons. "You just realize that time is fleeting," she says. "You gotta stop saying, ‘Maybe one day.'" For her, that has meant travelling frequently, taking up golf and piano lessons, and giving up "socking away money" for some rainy day she may never see.

"Whatever you're thinking of doing, do it now – not with the idea that you're gonna die tomorrow, but don't be sorry that you didn't."

And that's no joke.

Page 3 of 4