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/

Doing Battle with Cancer is Not Helpful

We have used this metaphoric language for so long that we may forget to ask if it is helpful. Often the war and battle language is used to motivate patients. And even in obituaries we read about winning and losing the war/battle/fight/with cancer.

But according to a research report by David Hauser at the University of Michigan, it turns out that, “Exposure to metaphoric language relating cancer to en enemy significantly lessens the extent to which people consider cancer-prevention and health promotion behaviors.”

This is so interesting. The power of language and the reality of unintended consequences.

What Hauser determined is that hearing the “metaphoric utterances” (he’s an academic) changes the way we think of the disease. “When we hear the phrase “Win the war on cancer,” it forces us to think of cancer as an enemy that we are at war with.” Well, yeah.

But his crucial point is this: War and battle language emphasizes taking aggressive action against cancer. But, most cancer-prevention behaviors, such as changing diet, curbing alcohol intake, limiting salt and not smoking involve “limitation and restraint.” Not fighting. Hence, according to Hauser, enemy metaphors de-emphasize those kinds of beneficial preventative behaviors and actually hurt people’s willingness to engage in them.

Kind of like, “If I had to I would kick cancer’s butt, but I’m not going to just use less salt.”

Here’s Hauser: “Constant exposure to even minor metaphorical utterances may be enough to make enemy metaphors for cancer a powerful influence on public health, with unfortunate side effects.”

Wow—there is the power of words, and the danger of words-even words used with positive intentions.

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*The full study will be available soon in a future issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

The Battle with Fighting Cancer

For years I have battled the idea of battling cancer. I fought against the fight and I declared war on the war on cancer. But now I have read an essay that more elegantly--and eloquently--makes the case and accurately describes that rub when women and men are celebrated for their "courage" in "fighting" cancer.

So today, enough of my words. Instead read this heartfelt and heartening piece by Peter Bach in New York Magazines's The Cut:

http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/08/avoiding-the-breast-cancer-warrior-trap.html

More on the Dance of Cancer

What if we replaced the metaphor of a war on cancer with the more energizing and empowered image of a dance with cancer? In addition to releasing all the war and killing and aggressive language we could invite a sensibility of partnership, grace, joy and even humor into our experiences with cancer—whether we are the patient or the caregiver.

I know that one of the reasons we use battle language is that we see cancer as an aggressive enemy but we often forget that in that militaristic dynamic we are also describing our own body as the enemy. After all, cancer does not come from outside of us. These are our cells dividing and our immune system responding.

But what if we saw cancer treatment as a corrective to our good body? As a way to make deep and life altering changes to our deepest being? And it is that of course. And as caregivers we too are deeply changed by the experience of cancer in our family and in our relationship. And caregivers—you know this—are changed forever. Just as the patient is never the same again, so too a cancer caregiver can’t go back.

I’ve been thinking about the dance of cancer this week and wondering about what kind of dance it is. What I realized is that a very long course of cancer and caregiving requires many kinds of dances. Sometimes it’s a tango—strong and sensual. Sometimes a waltz when you are counting out a rhythm and moving together, and sometimes it is the Flamenco with a lot of stomping! And of course as in any full ballet there are the times when it can only be a solo experience, and then others when the caregiver and patient face each other in full traditional Adagio—forceful and aggressive and insistent.

This quote from Friedrich Nietzsche hangs over the altar in my bedroom:

“And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”

Cancer too, gives us opportunities to dance.