Getting the language right.
The language we use to describe cancer matters because it speaks of how we are choosing to deal with our cancer.
Some people describe their experiences with cancer as a journey. It’s definitely not a sprint because it goes on for far longer than we expected. Some describe it as a wilderness trek, like hiking the Appalachian Trail, because so much is unknown about what we will encounter along the way. There will be times when we’re exhausted and can’t take another step. There will be storms that batter us around, trails that end and force us to backtrack and find a new route, and large wild and hairy animals show up — a lot of metaphorical, Joseph Campbell stuff.
While some experience cancer as a thru-hike, starting at one end and hiking until they reach the other end months later, some people hike for a time (cancer treatments) and take time off (remissions) until they finish the trek years later. Others feel it’s more of a rollercoaster ride through hell.
Has your journey been like the one that Bilbo takes in The Lord of the Rings with all of the horrible creatures like the Wargs, Orcs, and Ogres that want to whomp you with big, knobby clubs? Or is it more like Nan Shepherd’s relationship with the Cairngorm Mountains, the wildest in Scotland that has its own weather system? She kept hiking into them to discover what was there and discovered beauty within the harsh crags. For her, the goal was never about reaching the summit, but of finding a way to live with the mountains as part of her life.
How we talk about cancer is important because language helps us understand the reality of what is going on with us, or it can hide the truth from us. Is it battle or a relationship?
When we find the right words to talk about our cancer, we find it’s not as scary as when we began because we have pulled the immensity of cancer down into manageable words and regain a measure of control. When we can name it, we tame it.
When you have cancer, it’s tempting to say you’re in a battle with it. It’s easy to use military or sports terms to describe what’s going on because society speaks of it in this way. The terms are comforting in a back-handed way because they say we are doing something rather than letting things happen to us. The downside of using military terms is that when people die of cancer we blame them for not trying harder or for being weak. There is nothing weak about engaging in the struggle with cancer, and to say this negates all of our courage, strength, and resolve that is keeping us alive. And, if we feel we are losing the battle, or that we can never win, then we might give up trying.
For example, if you have prostate cancer, while military terms affirm the macho-ness of your manhood at a time when cancer is taking away what you think makes you a man — muscles, hair, a healthy libido — they divert you from paying attention to how you’re feeling. You also don’t let anyone in to help because this is your battle, you can handle it, and you push people away who want to help.
Doctors might describe what they are doing as fighting a war, with them on one side and cancer on the other, and bombarding cancer into submission with radiation and chemotherapy, but we, the patients, are the land between the two where the battle is taking place, and we want both of them to stop. To doctors, it may also seem like a chess match between Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty with patients being chess pieces on the board. The doctor’s goal might be to checkmate cancer and end the game, and sacrificing some pieces in order to win. But the goal should be to lose as few pieces as possible and reach a stalemate, to keep the game going until research finds a cure for those who have cancer and finds a way to prevent cancer from starting in others.
Eight years before Brian Doyle developed an aggressive brain tumor (either glioblastoma or ependymoma), he wrote an opinion piece “On not ‘beating’ Cancer” that was published in The Oregonian. He got fed up when yet another journalist talked about someone losing their battle with cancer. Doyle wrote that it’s wrong to describe cancer as a battle where there is a winner and a loser because there aren’t any. It’s about finding ways to endure. What “weapons” do we have to deal with cancer? Doyle says we have humor, patience, and creativity. You can read his article at this link: https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2009/01/on_not_beating_cancer.html.
Consider this imagery. If we talk about having cancer as being in a relationship with the ocean, then we expect to feel the natural ebb and flow of the waves of our situation. We expect to have good days and bad ones as we walk along the ocean shore. Storms will roll in and overwhelm us at times, but there will also be nights when an offshore breeze calms the ocean to stillness and we are mesmerized by the moon shimmering on the water.
Monica Berlin, a Knox College poet, wrote that it’s important we keep track and not “lose what is real in what is impossible. Everything is impossible.” Every great challenge seems impossible when we start out, including cancer. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find a way through cancer and continue to live our lives.
© 2025 Mark Liebenow
No comments:
Post a Comment