I once worked with a group of people where we all had a very friendly, teasing, joking relationship. One of the guys was diagnosed with cancer. In an effort to cheer him up, I wrote a list of “Top 10 cool things about Paul having cancer”. I was really kind of worried that it was pushing things over into bad taste, but he absolutely loved it and put it up on his web page. And then he recovered fully after chemo, although I don’t think I can take ALL the credit for that.
I don’t remember everything that was on it, but one was “after his limbs fall off, he’ll still be able to use his tongue to click his one-button mac mouse. No, wait, that’s a cool thing about Paull having LEPROSY”.