Moshe Kasher posted on Instagram on Father's Day, Sunday June 21, with the opening words "happy father's day. some lousy news. i wrote this on so much oxy," and then spent several slides describing one of the hardest three months of his life with the specific honesty and dark humor that has always been the mode through which he processes everything difficult.
"Three months ago," he wrote. "While in Savannah. Producing the new Judd Apatow/Glen Powell movie. The Comeback King. I found a bump on my tonsil. It was cancer. Which did not rule so hard."
On June 19, two days before the post, Kasher underwent surgery at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles.
He described it as a robot-assisted procedure in which his jaw was held open for five hours while surgeons cut out the cancerous tissue, slit his throat and dissected his neck.
His tongue was clamped and swollen. He has a neck scar. He is 46 years old. He is on Oxycodone. He is still himself.
The cancer is Stage 1 HPV-positive tonsil cancer, the type he described, characteristically, as "cancer you get from sex, so it's cool that now you know I've officially had that."
The cure rate for this particular type of cancer in the 95 percent range.
He is waiting to find out whether radiation will be needed. "But regardless," he wrote, "I will be okay and back to being a cool dude ASAP."
He used the post to say something genuinely important alongside the jokes. HPV-positive tonsil cancer is, as he wrote, an epidemic in men under 55.
He urged his followers to get checked and to vaccinate their children. "Work out your RFK anxieties on the measles if you must," he wrote. "Trust me. You do not want your kids to go through this."
Kasher managed to work on The Comeback King, the Judd Apatow and Glen Powell film, through the entire three months of diagnosis and pre-surgical anxiety.
He said Apatow could not have been more kind and supportive. He and his wife Natasha Leggero, also a comedian and his partner on The Endless Honeymoon podcast, recorded a full episode together right before the surgery.
He has appeared on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Shameless, Whitney and most recently The Pitt, where he played an ASL translator.
He does not know yet when he will return to live comedy. He ended the post the way someone ends a post when they have been through something enormous and come out the other side still able to write. "I breathe. I walk. I eat."
If you or someone you know has concerns about HPV-related cancers, the American Cancer Society can be reached at 1-800-227-2345.