A Candid Interview with Imogen Gough, the Author of "I Put the CAN in Cancer"

How "I Put the Can in Cancer" started...

Like its author, the book is deceptively childlike. The characters are stick figures. The print is large. The entire 175-page read takes maybe 10 minutes.

When you reach the punchline on page 175, it hits you: this little book is a powerful positive message about cancer, chemo and the business of living, written by someone who's been there and lived to tell the tale.

Imogen, known to thousands of Hudson/St. Lazare Gazette readers as the author of the allegedly biweekly Reality Check column, dropped by the office recently with a first proof copy of "I Put the Can in Cancer".

How did "I Put the Can in Cancer" come about?

I was on the Andrew Carter radio show and we were just talking about stuff I was doing while I was in chemo, and they had said 'don't ski.' I said 'okay, I won't ski,' so I went out and took up snowboarding. Andrew said 'why would you do that?' I said 'because I put the can in cancer.' It started from there. My sister-in-law would draw the pictures and I would come up with the words...it just kind of flowed.

How long did it take?

It took us from the beginning of chemo, which was January, until now to actually put it together and decide it was going to be a book, and do the whole publishing thing. It took time, but it's just a sideline, it's just for fun, and some of the proceeds with actually go to chemo wards. I'm thrilled with it, because it fills a niche, because people say 'what do I buy someone who has cancer'...you don't want to get them flowers, really, and you don't want to get them fruit, because when you have chemo everything tastes like metal.

The book is a great pick-me-up...it's empowering.

It's a lot deeper than one might first think. A lot of thought went into it. It gets the message across that we wanted to get across, in 500 words or less, and it's good for all ages, two to eighty. Any age, any cancer.

Did you even think about going to a publisher?

No time. I just didn't have the time and I heard about Amazon.com, how they have their own little publishing side, so I went with them. It cost money, but it was worth it, because now you have a book.

(When she's not impersonating chickens and writing her Reality Check column, Imogen works as a translator. She has four children, four dogs, three cats, and she hasn't slackened her pace a whit since being diagnosed with breast cancer.)

I found a lump in 2006, and I put off going to the doctor until I went on a vacation with my kids. I knew...I had a feeling, because it was in the family.

(That July, they found two kinds of cancer. Imogen underwent three surgeries, and the day before she was due to start chemo, they discovered she had a ruptured appendix.)

They couldn't diagnose it because they thought it was everything to do with the cancer. It would have killed me if I'd had chemo. I had to wait six weeks to start chemo.

I did six rounds of chemo, learned to snowboard, and I didn't stop working the whole time. Then life started to get back to normal.

Gradually. It's still not completely normal, because you always have scares of one kind or another. I'm monitored every three months.

I'm on tamoxifen. Tamoxifen can also increase the risk of endometrial cancer, so they may have to start monitoring for that. I recently had a scare with that, but it turns out it was nothing. Except nothing's ever nothing, you still worry about it, even when it's nothing.

Were you always this kind of person?

Yes. The chicken suit, the half-pipe in the back yard. If it's not fun, I'm not doing it. That goes with work, with anything. It's got to be fun. Life's too short. Last weekend, I went off a half pipe on a BMX bicycle and wiped out unbelievably -I've got a wicked bruise the size of a pedal - but I'm still going to do it tomorrow. I guess I should grow up, but no, I'm having too much fun.

What do your children think of you?

A lot of other kids say 'I wish my mom was like your mom'...my kids will roll their eyes and say ohhh, but they have fun with it. They think it's funny. When I was sick, it wasn't as funny, but it still kind of was. What they see is what they get.

Describe going through chemo.

Chemo is weird...the reason the book is really relevant for adults with cancer is that when you have chemo, and they say, okay, now sit in this bed and they hook you up to all these wires, you feel like you're four years old again. That's why the illustrations are kind of childlike, but adults can relate to it, because you're in a place where you're not yourself, you're not someone else, you're just in a very weird place.

The chemo wards are kind of dull...they need brightening up. We have a fund at the Royal Vic to buy gameboys and DVD players for people in chemo. I think we have about $2000 in the fund, so we can get started. No one has time to get the ball rolling, so we're going to get on that.

You're not going to get rich selling this, or are you?

Yeah! Of course! It's $15 per copy. There's a colour version for $30.

It's going to be sold on Amazon.com, I'm going to try to sell it to hospitals as a fundraiser, so they pay a certain amount for a certain number of books and the rest of it will go toward their chemo ward.

It's a hybrid. No one's ever seen one before. Because most people who write about cancer write about their ordeal with cancer. But if you take it to the fundamental level, you're still who you were, you're just in a bad situation. That's how you get through it. You just keep doing whatever you do.

Do you believe that cancer can be defeated through a state of mind?

Nope. Not for one second. The only reason that you need to keep a positive outlook is to get through it in your own head. I believe in chemo, I believe in surgery, I believe in all that, but I believe that staying positive makes everybody around you feel more comfortable with it, and for you it makes it less dreary, because chemo is absolutely awful. I prefer to laugh at things.

Has it changed your writing?

No. If you look at columns I wrote 10 years ago, and today, the quality's better now. I've never written about cancer, though, because I don't want to do that...I don't want to write about how sick I was. I prefer to spit it out in the middle of dinner. Do you know I almost died once? It's way more fun. I could die tomorrow.

We could all die tomorrow...

That's the point! People walk around being miserable, complaining about everything constantly, but they never do anything to change it. If you're that unhappy, do something about it. Stop complaining to me, I've got my own.

Has cancer changed you?

I try to take Fridays off, but it doesn't always work out, because people call me and they say would you translate one little document, and, like, okay, I'll do it. It's hard to say no.

Interview with Imogen Gough published in the Hudson Gazette on November 19, 2008