The Language of Cancer

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Open any local paper and you are likely to read the following headline: “Survivor Loses Battle with Cancer.”
We have adopted the language of war. Those with the disease are described as heroes. Finding a cure is a war. Our medical community leads our forces. Everyone must join the fight.
I challenge this metaphor. My former wife, Barbara, died from cancer, and my current wife, Jessica, has faced her second form of cancer.
Barbara was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer at the age of 34. She wanted to fully understand her disease, and she undertook every medical advance available.
The problem with the warrior metaphor is that it focuses less on life than death. The “courageous warrior” suggests toughness, certainty, and strength.
Barbara had a zest for life, a sense of humor, the ability to live with uncertainty and a willingness to share her deepest feelings including anger at injustice. These served her in life with cancer.
Throughout her illness, Barbara wanted to make sure that our family would continue to do the things we loved. Our children would go to every new children’s movie. This was not easy, as we had to bring the wheelchair and oxygen tank. We did not cancel trips to the beach, and we planned more.
We used Barbara’s cancer to bring all the family together. Both our families recognized that every day and everyone was more precious than ever. As always, the Passover Seder continued to be held at our home. Barbara took a trip to see old friends and then another to Washington, DC.
Upon her return, Barbara needed more rest time. All her care would be done from home. Her oncologist, our good Dr. B., began making more visits to the house. Without talk, he set out a plan for Barbara’s end of life treatment.
One night she called all of the family to her bedside. She sent her sister to the closet and announced that she had a gift for me. She had gotten a white doctor’s coat from Dr. B. and had it lettered in 70’s psychedelic style –My Doctor.
She died the next day, and was buried on September 18,1981. In Jewish gematria (numerology), 18 is the equivalent of the Hebrew word chai which means life.
 
After being a widower for three years, and now with two teens, I met Jessica, a family doctor who is committed to social justice, loves children, and is a careful observer of people and a wonderful writer.
Within a year we were married. Our life continued with our two older children Kafia and Eddie growing up and going off to college and then the birth of Talia and Jeremy.
On September 30, 2005, mybirthday, we learned that Jessica had breast cancer. She needed two surgeries and radiation treatments. She then entered a five-year clinical trial to prevent another breast cancer.
But cancer is never too far from anyone. In the summer of 2010Jessica had pelvic reconstruction surgery. After hours of surgery, her doctors checked the bladder to be sure that they had not “done any harm.” In checking, they saw tumors, a bladder cancer that had lain hidden. If she had not had this surgery, it would have progressed and had a worse prognosis.
Jessica was immediately scheduled to see her urological oncologist. We met young Dr. G., whose manner I quickly appreciated. Serious and frank, he made sure we understood the different forms of bladder cancer. Jessica would require two more trips to the operating room.
So how did Jessica cope with this news, and what did I observe? It would be easy to use our cultural and linguistic metaphors and simply see Jessica as a determined, courageous woman prepared to fight another “good battle.” But this approach is too limited. It limits both our understanding of human behavior and how we deal with illness. It does tell us a lot about culture, language, and myth.
Jessica has practiced medicine for over 30years. Her experience as a patient has also taught her much. Jessica feels it is ironic that, while she has made healthy living both a personal and professional pursuit, she could not prevent this cancer. Brave, yes… Human, too.
The Schorr Family shares a love of wit. During one of her low points I remarked to Jessica that she still could find something to laugh about. She responded, “I will not lose my sense of humor.”
Jessica has always loved Judaism. She asked me to read a chapter on healing which has in part led me to write this essay. The author, Rabbi Kerry M. Olitzky, suggests that in the Jewish tradition we see illness and death as a part of life. Shalom is often translated as peace. It more accurately means wholeness.
The Hebrew word shalom recognizes that life contains both joy and sadness and health and illness.My anthropology of illness and death requires that we keep in mind the complexity of human and social behavior. I look forward to the day when we discard the language of war as the fitting way to honor our loved ones, but rather see people in their wholeness and complexity. Shalom is a better metaphor.
 
Allen B. Saxe is a retired professor of anthropology and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

0 thoughts on “The Language of Cancer

  1. Thank you. I too am tired of the war metaphors and imagery in news reporting in general. Everything is a battle, a fight, a war on Christmas, cancer, fill-in-the-blank. Politicians blast their foes; blows are struck against people, causes, legislation. What it says is that everything is a struggle in which an opponent must be overcome and destroyed. There must be another way.

  2. Great to read this and what timing! I have a very good friend who is battling cancer and is fighting really hard right now. After two remissions, the cancer is back and she has contracted c diff during a recent admission to the hospital. As difficult as this is, her wit/sense of humor is in tact and in the struggle of all of this may have been as much a support for those in place to support her. Its both amazing and disheartening at the same time. Thanks Allen (& Jessica) for your story.

  3. I’m honored and touched to read this beautiful piece. I recall several years ago having a conversation with a person who was several years into a serious cancer diagnosis. We talked about the power of language and what it does to one’s psyche to have, as a primary self-definition, the notion that one is in an intense, internal “war,” “battling against” something taking place at the cellular level. Your beautifully rendered and deeply personal piece helps make the case for another rhetorical framework/metaphoric structure. It is both poignant and powerful. This message comes with peace-filled thoughts for you and your family and with prayers for your well-being.

  4. Thank you Allan for your moving and important article. I completely agree that we need to reframe our language and approach to cancer and other illnesses. Your article made me take a look a what Judaism has to offer as a guide through the cycles of life. I appreciate that you are bring your loving perspective to public attention. And thank you for sharing your deeply personal experience. I send prayers for your wife’s healing.

  5. Allen you are onto something in this wonderful piece. There is real danger in creating the perception that the optimal response to illness is, or should be, courageous warrior-like defiance. Of course, there are many good reasons to take bold steps to try and arrest a disease process. The problem occurs if a war-like approach is revered or normalized, through language, to the point at which it discourages patients from expressing or valuing their true preferences. What are we suggesting to a stage IV cancer patient who refuses treatment rather than “battling it out” by means of aggressive modalities? What message are we sending to the family of a patient who decides to “halt” therapy? Surely our truest admiration is not limited to the ferocity with which a patient responds to an illness.

  6. Allen’s beautifully written piece perfectly captures my sentiments and experience of my husband Tim’s 8-year journey with cancer. In his obituary, I wrote that he bravely “rode the waves of cancer diagnosis and treatments” because this seemed a more accurate description of the process than battle imagery depicts. Of course he endured pain and despair at times, but he often said, “Laurie, we’re the lucky ones”, referring to our ever-so-heightened awareness of the preciousness and transience of life. Referring to a loved one’s X-year battle with the disease unfortunately suggests that battling is all that the patient does during the treatment period. What about periods of remission, what about the love that is shared throughout, what about the personal and professional triumphs and discoveries that might occur?
    So, thank you, Allen, for sharing and offering up this challenge to our unhelpful, even unhealthy, habit of thought and language.

  7. I stumbled upon your article browsing online this evening, and was reading it (without noticing the author’s name) and immediately started thinking about my own friend Barbara who had been stricken with breast cancer years ago when we were very young, and about her family, and how helpless and inadequate my response had been…. I continued reading, and there were the names — Eddie and Kafia — and this was my friend Barbara, and Allen who we haven’t seen in twenty years, the author.
    Living some distance apart, and having fallen out of touch, we’ve never had a chance to meet Jessica or your younger children, but we are sending our prayers for healing and hopes for Jessica’s return to full health. In the thirty-three years since Barbara’s illness, unfortunately we’ve grown more acquainted with cancer, serious illness, and death. It is more important to reach out than to be worried about saying the correct thing. We are hoping for your good health, Jessica, and happiness and health for your whole family. Shalom, Katie and Arthur (If Tikkun will share my address with you, we would like to hear from you.)

  8. Thank you for this good lesson in matching language with life. Let us all become aware of the language of war and how this language has infiltrated our habits of expression. We can make a better choice!

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