Let’s start at the top and work our way down, shall we?

The brain

It’s time to tell your family you have cancer. Your mind is bursting with thoughts, emotions and some weird static feedback keeping you sane. This is the moment you wish you had put more time into learning meditation techniques.

The mouth

Eventually, you just put it out there. It comes out, like one giant burst of emotional confetti. And you get some kind of jaw-dropping reaction as your audience tries to put on the appropriate face. Refer to above image for further study.

The hands

Then, your audience commences to lay hands on you. Not necessarily in the religious, you-need-prayer fashion, but more in the oh-you-poor-thing way. It’s almost as if they touch you under the pretext of reassuring you while really they do it to reassure themselves that you’re still there.

The heart

Despite preparing for possibly days, the touch puts you over the edge. They’re crying. You’re crying. Everybody’s crying. And this is the exact appropriate time to express so much raw emotion—so don’t hold back!

The stomach

Now that the cry-fest is wrapping up, you try to segue into a more emotionally stable topic, like pizza. As in, “I can tell you more about the diagnosis over some pizza. Is anyone else hungry?” Or, “Do you want some lunch? Let’s talk more over lunch.” Not only does this move the conversation along, chewing gives you a great excuse to collect your thoughts before you answer any questions.

As for the rest of the anatomy… well, if you’ve been through it, you know the kind of crap that comes out during these talks!