Is Cancer a Journey, a Quest, Or and Adventure?

a beginning lexicon, part 1

I’ve called my experiences with cancer by a number of names, and different ones for each step from diagnosis through two kinds of radiation and a year of anti-hormone therapy as I encountered fear, trauma, and loneliness, to where I am now, in surveillance, with post-treatment uncertainty as to whether the cancer is gone. I continue to deal with a number of side-effects that stubbornly don’t want to fade away, and I’ve had to make adjustments in my life to accommodate them. In the coming weeks, I will see a urologist and a cancer dietician looking for solutions.

I’d love to hear how you describe your experiences with cancer, and I’ll post what I hear back. 

Battle / Fight / Warrior – I don’t like to use win-or-lose language with cancer because it says that we lose if we die, and this puts the blame on us for not trying hard enough, being strong enough, not deserving enough. Some things we don’t control; they can only be endured.

Journey – Is this too bland, too tame, too pale a word? It does suggest that we are going on a more rugged trip than an adventure. It can also be an internal journey of discovery, of personal, emotional, or spiritual growth. People in my cancer support group favor this term because to them it acknowledges that there will be ups and downs.

Labyrinth – unable to see what’s ahead, we wind around, encounter dead ends, have to backtrack and start off in a new direction until we reach our goal.

Marathon - of appointments, scans, biopsies, blood tests, surgery, chemotherapy, and daily management of the side effects with diet, rest, and exercise.

Outside of Time – existing in a place where time pauses, ceases to exist, or moves more slowly that it does for everyone else. We feel emotionally out of sync.

Quest – an arduous journey for a noble cause to find something we desperately need. It’s what Bilbo Baggins undertook in The Lord of the Rings when he scraped together his courage and went up against tremendous foes, finding help from others as he went along. Cancer research is a quest.

Rollercoaster Ride through Hell, like the Space Mountain ride at Disneyland that sends you speeding through the darkness where you can’t see what’s coming up, and has sudden drops and sharp turns that lurch our stomachs and scare the bejabbers out of us. Yep.

Waiting – as in Waiting for Godot. Waiting for the next blood test results and hoping they are improving. Waiting for the nausea of chemotherapy to subside. Waiting for our doctors to arrive and say we’re cured. There’s a lot of waiting around when you have cancer.

Wilderness Trek – Although I often speak of my cancer experiences as a journey, a sharper description would be that I feel I’m hiking through a mountain wilderness where the trail sometimes disappears and I have to guess which way is best. There are dangers — mountain lions, bears, ravines I can fall into, and icy rivers I have to cross. Yet I discover the beauty of the wilderness outside myself and within.

© 2026 Mark Liebenow