For Philly’s ‘token terminally-ill stand-up comic,’ it’s all fair game, including death and 9/11

Meet Kirsten Michelle Cills, a stand-up comic who survived 9/11; a podcast host who has cystic fibrosis; and an Eagles fan who parties with her oxygen pack on.

• On her life: “I was just born one of those people your great-aunt would read about and say she’d pray for me.”

• Taking her shot: “People are so taken aback that I’m dressed for a night out in a slutty outfit and still on oxygen. I’ll have a full face of makeup and be doing shots at the bar on oxygen.”

Stand-up comic Kirsten Michelle Cills is pretty sure she knows why you haven’t heckled her yet, Philly, and she’s kind of salty about it.

“Because I’m terminal nobody has the balls to heckle me. It’s the inverse of the bystander effect, everyone is standing around watching, but nobody will bully me,” Cills said. “I want hecklers so bad.”

Cills, 28, of South Philly, wants to show that she can take it as well as she can dish it out so much that her dream for her 30th birthday is to have a roast held in her honor.

She doesn’t have a dream for her 50th.

“I’ve never lived a day of my life where I’m like ‘When I’m 50.’ I’m not going to be 50,” Cills said. “I’ve never had the luxury to not talk or think about death.”

At 7, Cills was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a rare genetic lung disease that affects about 35,000 people nationwide. It’s kept her in and out of hospitals, on up to 22 medications a day, and often requires her to wear an oxygen pack and breathing tube. The median age of death for someone with the disease, which causes thick mucus that blocks airways and leads to lung damage, is 32, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

“Most people with cystic fibrosis are children,” Cills said. “Don’t think too hard about why.”

Two months after her diagnosis, Cills — a Montgomery County native who moved with her family to Manhattan as a kid — was walking with her mother and brother and standing at the World Trade Center when a plane crashed into the tower next to her on Sept. 11, 2001.

Watching the crash and seeing people die in front of her in very graphic ways are the first memories of life Cills has, a result of her PTSD from that day.

Since death was never something she could put off thinking about — or escape from — Cills has always talked about it.

“I would never think that there’s things that are off limits to talk about or are socially unacceptable. For me, it’s how I cope,” she said. “It’s not that deep. It’s just life. The stakes are low.”

Cills, who calls herself “terminally chill” on social media, talks about her experiences with cystic fibrosis and 9/11 in her stand-up routine. Then, she holds a mirror to her audiences by making them reexamine their own reactions when they’ve encountered someone living with a terminal illness or who’s survived a traumatic event.

“I like to point out to the audience what people do, like going up to sick people and saying ‘You’re so brave,’ or people feeling the need to tell me where they were on 9/11,” Cills said. “I get so many people who come up to me after shows and I say ‘I do that all the time and I never thought about it.’”

While Cills loves watching people squirm, she actually started making jokes as a kid to put others at ease.

“When you’re a sick person, your whole job is making other people in your life comfortable because everybody is sad around you,” she said. “So I felt all this obligation of being the person to lighten the mood, because when it comes to my disease, I’m the only one who can.”

After their Manhattan home was destroyed on 9/11, Cills and her family moved back to Montgomery County, eventually settling in Horsham. As a kid, Cills spent about a third of every year at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, often in quarantine (”before it was cool”).

When she was at home, Cills found herself awake at night watching reruns of Cheers and Three’s Company. At 14, she discovered Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and became “obsessed” with the host. It was through Fallon, whom Cills eventually met when her mom took her to a taping, that she realized stand-up could be a career.

After graduating from Hatboro-Horsham High, Cills attended the University of the Arts in Center City, where she majored in acting. During her senior year, she began doing open mic nights in Philly and performing stand-up.

Today, stand-up comedy is Cills’ full-time job. She has performed at Helium Comedy Club, opened for comedian Judy Gold at City Winery, and teaches stand-up comedy classes at the Act II Playhouse in Ambler. But right now, complications from her cystic fibrosis are keeping Cills from the stage.

Along with local rapper The Bul Bey, Cills cohosts the Franklin Institute’s So Curious podcast, on which she introduces herself as Philly’s “token terminally-ill stand-up comic.” The fun, fast-paced show delves into topics you might not expect from the Franklin, like sex robots and gaydar.

“We’re trying to talk about things that are really pertinent in science but are also pertinent in people’s everyday lives,” Cills said. “And we’re speaking to people who grew up going to the Franklin Institute and are now adults.”

Cills is also a die-hard Eagles fan, literally. When she was hospitalized the Monday before the Super Bowl this year, she told her doctors she had to be out in time for the game.

“I told them ‘I will not be here on Sunday, whether it’s because you guys let me out or I have to sign an AMA (against-medical-advice form),” she said. “I was released right before kickoff.”

Since Cills doesn’t know when she’ll be kicking off this mortal coil, she’s already started tackling her bucket list. She’s met Jimmy Fallon, smashed a snow globe in the street, and sipped champagne in France.

But there are dreams on her list she has yet to conquer like drinking tequila in Mexico; having enough money to tip someone $1,000; learning how to do a cartwheel; building a baller sandcastle; and eating an entire cheesecake slice from the Cheesecake Factory in one sitting.

Someday, Cills also hopes to perform at the Kimmel Center or the Academy of Music here in Philly, the city she that she loves, where nobody is ever too shy to ask why she’s got a tube up her nose or if they can try on her oxygen pack at an Eagles tailgate.

“When I go to other cities, people just won’t mention it. It feels like I’m being gaslighted. ‘Am I crazy? Am I not on oxygen?’” she said. “But in Philly, nobody is ever afraid to say what they’re thinking out loud.”

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