Language Makes a Big Difference in Cancer Land

Here is an excerpt from a New York Times story about the power of the word "cancer". Test yourself: what is your reaction to lesion, abnormal cells or the word cancer?

Words prompt women to seek surgery

Women were more likely to want surgery when they were told they had a type of breast cancer than when the diagnosis was a lesion or a group of abnormal cells — even though all three scenarios described the same disease. The findings, reported Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, offer a new way to gauge the power of the word "cancer."

The words doctors use to tell a woman she has ductal carcinoma in situ can make a big difference in the treatment she chooses. DCIS can be an early form of breast cancer. But in many cases, the tumor never grows beyond the milk duct where it was found. If it does invade the surrounding tissue, it can take 40 years to do so.

— New York Times

Check Your Language

The language of cancer: victim, survivor, thriver, patient. What do you call yourself and what do others call you? Below is a link from New York Times Health Pages and author Susan Gubar, who wrote the terrific book called, "Memoir of a Debulked Woman" about her ovarian cancer experience.

In the article below she writes about cancer's language and how we identify ourselves. She raises the tricky linguistics versus timing question: if you are not at the five year mark can you claim "survivor? If your cancer was 20 years ago can you still play that card? I live with these questions . I'm a cancer caregiver and a cancer...what? survivor? patient? person?

Gubar is simply a great writer. So click on the link below and take a look. And share this one with your friends.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/not-a-cancer-survivor/?smid=pl-share

Cancer is so 19th Century

Read today's New York Times article by science writer Gina Kolata about why the word "cancer" may be on its way out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/health/cancer-by-any-other-name-would-not-be-as-terrifying.html

Vagina

Words—it’s all about words. Language is what creates our reality, and language is what allows us to think. Think about that. If you have language, you have power and in CancerLand we need all the power we can get.


Words really do matter. That’s what got me started on this journey of writing about sex and intimacy and cancer. I had to write out my frustration because of all the words no one would use with me and John, and because of the words they did use that made me crazy.

But it’s not just in CancerLand. Our culture is inhibited about sexual language and even anatomical language. Now, I know that most women over 30 think they have that nailed. We do not talk like our mothers or our grandmothers. We have come to a place where we believe that we are so open and forthright; we don’t say “down there” or “pee pee” to refer to our genitals but we have raised a huge group of young girls who think their whole genital area is a vagina.

No! That is not your vagina or your Vajayjay—sorry Oprah. Most of the time we are mislabeling the mons, vulva, labia and clitoris, with the equally euphemistic vagina.

And that is a problem in CancerLand and in women’s lives. To think we need words and to have intimacy we have to have words. So what are we gonna do about our words?

War (on cancer) What is it Good for?

I’m reading “The Emperor of Maladies” – this new book is a psycho-socio-historical story of cancer and Cancer. The book is being heavily reviewed right now and everyone in Cancer Land is going to cringe a little or a lot. Those of us who love in the time of cancer will also be nodding and crying but cheering too.

The author Mukherjee –an oncologist--is able to break down the language, culture, economics and the politics of cancer.

From the review in November 8 2010 New Yorker magazine:

“But it’s hard to wage a war against a poorly defined enemy. If the enemy (cancer) doesn’t define itself, then you can configure the enemy you need for the war that you want to fight. That’s what happened with the war on cancer. It gave definite form, Mukherjee says, to an adversary that was essentially formless.”

“Cancer --a disease of colossal diversity—was recast as a single monolithic entity. In this way the War on Cancer resembles less the war on Nazi Germany than the War of Terror.”

In fact it is simply that: a war on terror. The war on cancer is designed to increase our fear of mortality, our fear of death and ultimately our fear of life.

Whatever..

I’m thinking about how things get reduced to a symbol, shorthand ways that we communicate, and the funny ways that people think/talk about cancer.

The other day I heard a friend talking to another friend about one of her friends who has cancer and she said, “Yeah and she has cancer…you know, the bandana and whatever.”

Cancer, the bandana and whatever.

The trouble is, I knew exactly what she meant.

Home Wrecker

Thank you Oprah and Rielle Hunter for re-framing the feminist discussion: “Are women property?” Most people would say that women are not, but when we enter this discussion it turns out that men are.

Hence language like: home wrecker and a husband stealer. But notice that in these discussions—on the air and all the next day at the water cooler—it’s always the women getting bashed—and mostly by women.

Infidelity brings out the most anti-woman beliefs in the most feminist women. We blame a woman or both women in the social construction of infidelity.

The “other woman” is a thief, home wrecker and man stealer. On the other hand if we determine that she’s not the bad one then certainly the wife is because she didn’t “hold onto her man”. In either case the man is just a piece of valuable property to be kept, owned, held or stolen. Kind of like a check book with a penis.

Oprah for all her big talking and her embracing of the pseudo-psychological and the empowerment of women still misses the basic geometry: Infidelity is a triangle. Three human beings, equally flawed, equally trying, equally noble, equally victims, equally responsible.

"Ly" Day

We’ve had a big snow day today and in addition to dressing for the weather a day like this also accelerates word worries here at the home of a writer and an English teacher. Alas, a snow day is also “Watch Your Adverbs” day. Yes, sadly, on a bad weather day we are likely to hear the grating and lonely adjective that wants to be an adverb. The friendly and well-intentioned, “Drive safe” longs to be “Drive safely”. Ditto for “Drive careful” and its preferred “Drive carefully.”

But in addition to enjoying our word fussiness, we had a great day. John had no school but I had to get to work—my work increases in bad weather—so he did the cars and the shoveling and later brought lunch to my office. Tonight I came home to fresh pasta for supper. On a day like this I know we live happy and happily.

It's Not a Battle

I have always been a reader of obituaries. Maybe I always knew I’d live in a surround of death. Or maybe I always loved the snapshot portraits of people thru the lens of their death. Now, since John’s cancer began I read them also to see the mentions of cancer, of colon cancer, of whether the illnesses were short or long. I see how many die after a “Battle”, “Brave Battle, or “Courageous Battle” with cancer.

Does no one have the courage to refuse a battle? To surrender willingly? To hand over the territory or treasure without a fight?

But then I remember: in most cases these death notices are written by the survivors, by those who watched what they think of as a “battle”. How many times was it not a battle but just doing the next thing? Whose military language is this and why is it necessary to talk about fighting, battles, enemies and winning and losing when this is life and death. We get both. One isn’t a win and the other a loss. Humans live and then die. That’s the whole package and it’s a “win-win.”

I have this same cranky annoyance when I hear advocates talk about “curing cancer”. I mean, if we do will all the people who die of cancer get to stay alive forever and ever? No, they would then get to die of something else. In most cases something more awful than cancer. We will die. Why is that so hard to grasp?

Language Lesson

I learn a lot from John but today I got a really important lesson: Language creates reality. I can create my reality by how I speak about my life and my experiences. Last night he was telling me about the very painful mouth sores he has now and I said, “That’s awful.” and he said, “No, it’s not awful, it’s annoying.”

Now I had heard him before describing the side effects from chemo as annoying and as inconvenient but I just took that to be his stoicism, maleness, macho-guy stuff. This morning I replayed his words in my head and I got it. If something is awful or terrible then you are trapped. But if it is annoying, well, that’s all it is. You feel it, you deal with it but you go on. It’s affecting you but it doesn’t have you. It can’t rule you and you are not a victim.

All of a sudden I could see that the words I choose are making my life actually BE one way or another. His cancer may be a tragedy, an awful thing, or simply something that is happening in our lives. How many times do we say “the power of language”? I want to play with this, watch my words, and see if I can create a new reality for my experience now.