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Photos: Chicago Comedy Veteran Mike O'Brien Opens Up About Cancer Battle

By Stephen Gossett in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 26, 2016 5:26PM

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Mike O'Brien / Getty Images / Photo: Ben Gabbe

Former Saturday Night Live cast member and Chicago improv veteran Mike O’Brien recently underwent two surgeries for melanoma. He chronicled his thoughts about the operation plus the physical effects on Monday in a series of moving and occasionally bemused Instagram posts.

O’Brien, who cut his sketch-comedy teeth at iO and Second City in the mid-aughts, said his extended family has a history of skin cancer and that he was diagnosed just a couple of weeks ago. Doctors missed some of the melanoma in O’Brien’s cheek in the first operation, and he went under again one week later. The second operation successfully removed the cancer, O’Brien posted.


True to form, the creator of 7 Minutes in Heaven brought a splash of levity as he recounted the events. “Now, I doubt they a special version of this surgery for guys with popular web series, but obviously taking off the bandage and seeing [the stitches] was a bummer.


O’Brien also noted feeling pain in a very odd part of the body for someone who had undergone facial surgery: his foot. “I woke up with my foot hurting a ton, too. Exactly 6 feet from the cancer location,” he wrote. “Did they drop me? Did they get a full head of steam up with my gurney then use my foot to boast open some swinging doors? We'll never know.”


He ended with note of appreciation for friends and family—and clip of “beautiful life philosophy” from Hall of Fame pitcher Goose Gossage. “Even the home runs I gave up were great,” he ruminates.


[H/T Tribune]