Humor is best Rx for cancer survivor

I always wondered who the anonymous cancer survivor was in a picture taken of me and LDS President Thomas S. Monson at the Huntsman Cancer Hospital groundbreaking on Oct. 31, 2008.

Well, earlier this month, after attending my own checkup at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, I found that unknown cancer survivor hanging out at the Huntsman gift shop.

"I know you. … Where do I know you from?"

"I don't know," she said dumbfounded.

"You look so familiar…"

"You do, too."

"Oh, I know, I know … you were the one I was photographed with at the Huntsman's Cancer Hospital's groundbreaking with President Monson!"

"Yeah, yeah, that's right," she said, smiling.

Her name's Linda May Hill, a single mother of seven children with her first grandbaby on the way, but she's anything but anonymous or unknown.

We hugged tightly. It was as though I'd found a long-lost kindred sister, and in essence I had. Once a breast cancer survivor sister always one. Whether you've known each other or not.

Come to find out, since our picture was taken that Halloween day, Hill's been anything but nameless.

This month she's on the cover of Wasatch Women's magazine as Wasatch's Women of the Year, has appeared on "The Glenn Beck Show," National Public Radio, KUTV/Ch. 2, and on K-Bull 93 F.M., raising money for cancer through her nonprofit organization, SoMuchMore (www.somuchmoreonline.com), by producing, wearing and selling one comical T-shirt at a time.

One of her shirts caught the eye of talk show host Beck while he was in Salt Lake City working on a project with Jon Huntsman Sr.

"He laughed, thought it was great and invited me on his show," she said

Some of Hill's catch-phrase T-shirts include her No. 1 best sellers, "Of course they're fake … the real ones tried to kill me," and "I lost both breasts to cancer ... but men look me in the eye now," and her No. 2 best seller, "I lost my colon, but I'm still full of crap."

She told NPR, "Everybody has their own way of getting through things. ... This just must be my way of doing it."

A three-time cancer survivor, Hill's endured Hodgkin's lymphoma, thyroid and breast cancer. She's missing her thyroid, breasts, colon, uterus and appendix.

"I haven't figured out why I'm really good at making cancer cells," she laughs.

"You can laugh or be mad or be sad, but everybody prefers to laugh.

"The thing I love about this is helping other people smile," Hill told KUTV/Ch. 2.

"It doesn't matter if you have three months or three years, have a blast," she says. "If my kids want me to play 'Mario Brothers' instead of doing the dishes, I can tell you right now I'm playing 'Mario Brothers.' 

"Cancer does not define us," adds Hill, "we're so much more."

Sure are, Linda May Hill, one laugh at a time.

Cynthia Kimball Humphreys is a professional speaker and trainer. She writes a column for weeklies in southern Utah and is a southern Utah correspondent for the Deseret News. She can be reached at kimball@every1counts.net. Her column, "GR8NESS," appears on deseretnews.com monthly.