When the cancer came back again, Hawaii-born author Margaret Mitchell Dukore posted a challenge on Facebook: Tell me what I’m not going to miss when I’m gone. She primed the pump with some examples: nuclear war, Chuck E. Cheese, spellcheck …

Dukore, 60, a 1968 Punahou graduate known as Margie to her friends, survived breast cancer in 2007. She had two surgeries and radiation and took the whole thing in stride. "I’m probably one of the very few who can say that my ‘breast cancer experience’ was painless, and even entertaining," she said. Entertaining because she was part of the entertainment, joking with medical staff and sharing her irreverent observations.

Dukore is the author of two novels, "Bloom" and "A Novel Called Heritage." In 1982 the latter won the Max Perkins Prize, an award named for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book editor. Her work, often set in Hawaii, is marked by humorous first-person narratives and characters who do things like toss soap suds into the Dillingham Fountain.

Six months after finishing breast cancer treatment, Dukore was given a clean bill of health. But when she was diagnosed with throat cancer, the treatment was much more grueling.

"The beams of radiation needed to hit the tumor from like 50 different directions," she said. "They created a mesh mask for me. … Every day I was bolted to the table with my mask and shoulders, biting down on a rubber mouthpiece. The computer was programmed to turn me in different directions, and while this was happening, I tried to think of something amusing to say so I could keep up my reputation as The Entertainment."

Last fall, the cancer returned yet again.

"I was supposed to be dead in October, and I’m not," Dukore said in a phone interview from her home in Oregon. Though her speech is affected by the radiation treatments, her energy is high and she’s still searching for ways to make the narrative humorous, to maybe help the people closest to her deal with what’s coming.

Dukore’s friends took up her Facebook challenge, suggesting things she should feel glad to miss: property taxes, ingrown toenails, war, Adam Sandler movies, Alzheimer’s, Kardashian weddings, Oregon rain, the sound of leaf blowers, the smell of burned microwave popcorn. It is an inspired list.

She’s been working on a new novel. Coincidentally, in the last chapter, her protagonist dies of cancer. "The character is not me, but maybe this will work in my favor. I’ll have to talk to my new agent," she joked.

The list of things she’s going to miss is shorter, but impossible to joke about: children, grandchildren, her beloved husband Gary Lisman, her circle of friends.

"I’ve had an amazing life," she said, and then comes up with a witty line to sum it up: "There’s enough for another novel. Maybe I’ll have to work on it and drop it from the sky."

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Reach Lee Cataluna at lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.