Click here to read the full article.
Moshe Kasher has been diagnosed with tonsil cancer, the comedian revealed on Instagram.
“Three months ago … I found a bump on my tonsil,” Kasher posted on Sunday. “It was cancer, which did not rule so hard.”
Kasher, a stand-up
comic who recently appeared in “The Pitt,” was in Savannah, Georgia, at the time, working on the new Judd Apatow and Glen Powell movie “The Comeback King.”
On Friday, Kasher underwent a procedure in Los Angeles, joking that “a Jewish surgery robot at Cedars Sinai yanked my jaw open for five hours and cut it out and then slit my throat and dissected my neck, leaving me with a hardcore neck scar which will make people reluctant to street fight me.”
Kasher said his tongue was “clamped and yanked” out of his mouth. It’s “so swollen and bruised, I sound like ‘I Am Sam,'” he said, referencing the Sean Penn character.
Attaching photos of himself in the hospital, Kasher wrote, “This has been the most terrifying and consciousness consuming experience of my life. My life has been terror, meditation, tears, and medical planning (oh and 12 hour days on set pitching jokes).”
He added, “I truly cannot believe I managed to work an entire movie while dealing with this, but Judd could not have been a more kind, supportive, and nurturing friend all while on the verge of a five hour energy overdose from his terrifying habit.”
Kasher said while “I am in pain,” the “good news is the cancer I have has an incredibly high cure rate (in the 95% zone).” He is waiting to hear whether he needs radiation, “but regardless I will be okay and back to being a cool dude ASAP,” Kasher wrote.
Joking that the “good news” is that he was diagnosed with the type of “cancer you get from sex,” Kasher encouraged his followers to get checked and to vaccinate their kids, writing, “HPV positive toncil cancer is an epidemic in men under 55.”
Kasher said he is unsure when he will return to live comedy, but he and his wife, fellow comic Natasha Leggero, recorded an episode of their “Endless Honeymoon Podcast” right before his surgery.
“Thanks to Natasha and all of my wonderful friends who have been so supportive,” Kasher concluded. “I woke up on that operating table so flooded with emotions and gratitude for my life and the gift of consciousness. I can’t wait to go back to work. but for now — I breathe. I walk. I eat. I survive. I live.”
Kasher is a comedian known for his observational black comedy and crowd work, and he wrote about his fascinating upbringing as a Hasidic Jew with deaf parents, who then struggled with drug addiction as a teenager, in his memoirs “Kasher in the Rye” and “Subculture Vulture.” In an homage to his own work as a sign-language interpreter, he appeared in Season 2 of “The Pitt” as an ASL translator.
