So reads the headline of today’s Dear Abby column. It is a doozy.

DEAR ABBY: I have been battling breast cancer and have been blessed to have a lot of support from family, friends and some awesome medical providers. My husband’s best friend and his wife socialize with us quite often, and the friendship is important to him. I recently celebrated a birthday and these friends had us over for a belated birthday dinner. They bought me beautiful flowers and a gift. The card attached made a joke about my “aging breasts,” which she found quite funny. Abby, I had a mastectomy, which she knew about! To make matters worse, my hair has just started to grow back from the chemo, so I decided to have some highlights put in, and she told me she didn’t like my new hair.

Read the full complaint and Abigail Van Buren’s official response here.

David Schmader—former weed columnist and Stranger associate editor—is the author of the solo plays Straight and Letter to Axl, which he’s performed in Seattle and across the US. His latest...

31 replies on ““Cancer Patient Is Stunned By Woman’s Tasteless Joke””

  4. i read the response – who gives a fuck if the woman becomes defensive when the cancer survivor tells her off? the “friend” deserves to have her ass handed to her, and to have to beg forgiveness.and who cares if it affects the husbands’ friendship? no way should that cancer survivor have to suffer through that insensitive crap just so her husband can feel like he has some pristine bromance friendship.
    shit.

  6. I agree with @2. As far as I can tell, this is your standard Dear Abby letter and your standard Dear Abby response. I’m completely missing anything interesting in this whole exchange.

  8. @4, Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who are capable of and do joke about their own illnesses, even cancer. The fact that she’s joking about cancer isn’t the insensitive part, the insensitive part is joking about it with someone who isn’t herself making jokes about it and obviously doesn’t have a sense of humor about it (which is fine).

  12. The last letter is even better: mattress salesperson stunned by customers’ frequent tatseless jokes about themselves:

    DEAR ABBY: I work as a mattress salesperson. Often when I tell my senior customers about the 10-year warranty on a bed, they’ll reply, “Oh, I doubt I’ll be around that long.”
    At that point I’m usually at a loss for words. Any suggestions as to an appropriate response? — SPEECHLESS IN SUFFERN, N.Y.

  19. the advice on the last one was SO bad. the correct answer is to politely change the topic and move the fuck on. if i was the octogenarian who said something about probably not living for decades into the future, and then the sales girl tried to tell me how to manage my estate planning, i’d kick that bitch right in the taco.

  22. Where I come from, friends say fucked up shit to friends all the time. Friends give inappropriate cards, make unfunny jokes, and mouthshit comments on your hair that wouldn’t fly in the workplace BECAUSE THEY’RE YOUR FRIENDS. Your friends say and do shit like that because they’re not on their guard. They don’t have to be right all the time. The choice you make when something like a card or crack about your hair gets under your skin is whether to downplay it and let it ride or escalate it and risk hurting the friendship. I say usually your best bet is just to let it ride.

  23. @3 Is right. Jeanne Phillips might have legally inherited her mother’s pen name, but she didn’t inherit the advice gene. Her columns have largely varied between vacuous and awful since she took over.

  24. It’s fairly apparent to me that, while the husbands are friends, this woman is just sort of along for the ride. That being said, making that kind of joke with someone you are not intimately acquainted with is asinine, and insensitive.

    Dear Harried: Your husband’s friend’s wife is a mean-spirited cunt. Try to avoid her.

  25. @12 How about “Well, then, this matress soaks up ten gallons of putrid flesh and body fluids and is maggot resistant in all weather conditions.”

  28. @15, that’s how things go, and it’s on the acquaintance to be polite. I’m not BFFs with all the DH’s friends or their girlfriends/wives, but I’m still NICE to them. We share company on a regular basis because of our mutual connection, and antagonizing them is only going to make the DH and/or his friend mad at me. Bonus: I have made some really awesome friends by association. Making a joke about getting older on the occasion of an acquaintance’s birthday is fine, doing it in a way that makes light of a bad situation is just mean.

    That said, I do agree with Abby that many people are freaked out by cancer and other horrible diseases. I just avoid the topic myself, and I don’t think the joking is okay, but I do think there’s something to be said for not knowing what to say. But I do agree that the LW needs to tell the friend’s wife to knock it the fuck off.

  29. Seems to me that having cancer is a say-whatever-the-fuck-you-want-to-assholes card (and that’s a good thing). Can’t say I think much of this woman’s husband or his best friend for allowing this to happen to his wife.

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