When it comes to the critically ill, gift givers play it safe with flowers and cards. The latest trend is gag presents mocking illness, laughing in the face of  disease.

Bernice Landry
Toronto Star, Nov. 4, 2005

When Meg Sutherland discovered her good friend Jason had been diagnosed with testicular cancer, she wanted to give him something special. This stay-at-home mom baked him his favourite cookies, made him some candles, and hunted for gag gifts that she thought he would get a kick out of. And before she wrapped everything up, she added one final touch ? a "Cancer Sucks!" T-shirt.

When Jason opened up the package, she got the response she was hoping for, especially from the T-shirt: "He was just floored when he got it, because, he's like, `It does suck!'"

When choosing a get-well gift for those dealing with a critical illness, most people still opt to play it safe: a card, pretty flowers or a thoughtful home-cooked meal are still the overwhelming favourites. These gifts tend to be designed to distract and soothe the recipient from the discomforts and worries of illness.

But there is a whole new trend in get-well gifts, still small but gaining momentum over the Internet. These gifts accomplish the opposite: they take aim at the illnesses by making light of them or mocking them. The products' creators tend to have their own deeply personal stories and motivations, and have grown to see the value of laughter and defiance in the face of illness.

Mostly this gift-giving trend has been initiated by small independent retailers in the U.S., but even the largest, most mainstream organizations seem to be moving one step closer toward more unconventional products and messages.

The Canadian Cancer Society, for example, has just begun offering a Thingamaboob, which is a keychain made up of clear and pink beads of escalating size that show women the different lump sizes that can be detected through breast-screening. The Thingamaboob, which was adapted from a product created by the American Cancer Society and Susan G. Komen Foundation, has only been available from the Canadian Cancer Society for a couple of weeks, but already hundreds have been sold.

One stay-at-home Toronto mom and breast cancer survivor, Marilyn Cornblum, bought between 40 and 50 of the $5 keychains to give out to everyone she knows at Christmas.

"I immediately liked it and I immediately formed the idea of giving it to everyone I know," she says. "It's a sweet little thing, pretty and stylish," she adds. "It's a great reminder to not only rely on one method of detection, in kind of a cute way."

The gift Meg Sutherland bought was created by Rick Horton, a 43-year-old postal worker whose enterprise was born out of grief.

About a week after his mother Donna died from cancer, Horton, his brothers and stepdad, still reeling from the emotional toll, decided they needed to clear their heads. So they mounted their motorcycles and drove from their home in Bixby, Okla. to St. Petersburg, Fla. At the end of the 10-day, 4,828-kilometre journey, Rick had T-shirts made for everyone that read: "First annual cancer sucks motorcycle ride."

Soon afterward he decided to turn his grief into defiance by offering T-shirts and other products with the abbreviated message that bears the name of his website: cancersucks.com.

"I lost my mother to cancer and it really made me mad, and it really sucks, and I hate it, and that's why we exist," he says.

Besides hosting an online shop, Horton also raises money for cancer research by selling his "Cancer Sucks!" products at motorcycle and car shows, heavy metal concerts and poker runs.

"I didn't plan on it being a form of therapy when I started doing this," he says, but that's exactly what it has turned out to be.

"I've had these people come up to a booth and say, `Hey, I want one of those cancer ... shirts. They won't even say `sucks' but they want the shirt," he says.

"Everyone that's had to deal with cancer in their life, whether they'll say it or not, they think cancer sucks."
For Angela Lemont, a 26-year-old expectant mother who lives on a ranch outside of Kalamazoo, Mich., the date Oct. 26, 2004 is etched into her memory forever. It's the day she learned she has Type 1 diabetes.

Facing multiple daily insulin shots for the rest of her life, and with many of her dreams put on hold, a distraction from the illness that changed every aspect of her world was pretty close to impossible.

So instead she began searching for something inspirational or motivational, something, she says, "to give me a boost."

When she couldn't find anything she wanted, she and her husband Dan decided to strike out on their own. On their speakupbeheard.com site they sell mostly quirky products aimed at people with diabetes, Crohn's disease, colitis, fibromyalgia ? even body-image disorders.

There are pillows that proclaim "I Am Stronger Than a Jelly Doughnut," and T-shirts that say, "I am stronger than ----ing Tourette's." There's a tote that states: "Diabetes Makes Me Twice as Sweet," messenger bags, even a T-shirt for your dog.

"It's so emotional dealing with these diseases that you need something that's going to motivate you every day, to help you step back, have a little laugh, and think, okay, I can deal with this," Lemont says.

One of the edgiest products is the brainchild of Steve Saltman, a Boston-based entrepreneur who was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer at age 30, just five months after he got married. Saltman was posting a message online and had the urge to sign off "f--- cancer." But he thought better of it, and settled for the same message spelled backward: kcuf recnac.

A few curious readers asked him what the encryption meant, and when he told them, he sensed from their reactions that he was on to something. So he ordered 200 mugs. "I put the backwards spelling on the mugs at first, and then I got requests for the real thing," he says. "And then I thought to myself, `Why am I holding back?'"

Saltman, who has been cancer-free since 1996, says his online business might have started out as a way of venting his own anger, but it continues because of the enthusiastic feedback he gets from customers. "I get emails from people who say `This is exactly what I want to give my sister, this is how she thinks. She's in the hospital and she's tired of teddy bears.'"

Saltman remembers how anger and defiance played a key role in his battle against the disease. At about round seven of chemotherapy he began to picture himself as a boxer in the ring, bare-chested and still hooked up to an intravenous drip, with Muhammad Ali coaching him from the sidelines. Each round of chemo became a round against his opponent, cancer, which he imagined as "a faceless boxer, bigger than me, beating the shit out of me ... And all you have to do is survive the match."

It helps him stay focused and, ultimately, beat his cancer.

Heidi Adams has bought Saltman's mug for herself and has given it as a gift to her parents (both cancer survivors), relatives and friends with cancer.

"They love it but sometimes they'll hide it in the back of their mug cabinet," she says. "They'll send you an email saying, `When my kids go off to school, I'll pull it out and have my coffee.'"

In her work as a cancer advocate, Adams noticed what she calls a "huge emphasis on a positive attitude" that she believes is a bit off the mark.

"It should be called an honest attitude, and that covers all the bases, because some days you feel angry and some days you feel sad," she says.

"When you give it to them on a coffee mug it gives permission to say that and feel that."
Bernice Landry is a Toronto-based freelance writer who saw two friends diagnosed with breast cancer this year. One died last summer at 34.