Cancer on $5 a Day (Chemo Not Included)

In the spring of 2000, stand-up comedian Robert Schimmel was diagnosed with stage III non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and soon the fire of his white-hot career started to fizzle.

But Schimmel never lost his sense of humor, his searing honesty, and most of all, his passion to make people laugh. Indeed, it was his basic need to entertain—even if the only people around him were suffering from cancer and the r...