Are You A "PWC" or a "Cancer Veteran" or maybe a "WMPHMO"?

Oh I do love Susan Gubar! She is cancer writer extraordinare, and that is because she is one of America's great writers, who happens to have cancer. Let's keep those factors in the correct order, please.

But true confessions: I have been reading Gubar's New York Times Living With Cancer column a long time and, while moved and impressed by her intuition, honesty and expression, I did not read her bio until recently. Shame on me. Susan Gubar, Ph.D.  is Professor of Literature at Indiana University, anthologist, literary analyst, and Pulitzer nominee. And yeah, she has cancer, and she writes about it beautifully and powerfully.

Keith Negley

Her column in today's New York Times is called "Words That Obscure" and it's about language--the language of cancer. As you would expect from a writer and literature professor, she teases this apart, shows us the pain that language can cause, and she suggests some new terms for people with cancer.

I put the link to the column below. You'll want to click on this and read the whole piece, and share it with your CancerLand friends. And perhaps you'll choose some new terms to describe yourself and your cancer experience. And maybe too, you'll share this with your oncologist, nurse, and caregivers--for that is how--bit by bit--we change language and thought and meaning."

And if you love her column/blog maybe you'll want to look at her book, "Memoir of a Debulked Woman."

Here's the link:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/category/voices-2/living-with-cancer/