Enby BC - 17 - Phrasing
The language surrounding cancer is difficult. Well-meaning people speak of your diagnosis in a manner that ends up minimizing it. They really don’t mean to, but they do - they aren’t equipped to talk about it because cancer is so damn taboo. Hell, I didn’t know how to talk about it until I had it. Before I get into I want to remind you that cancer patients are not a monolith. Some don’t mind certain phrases and terms I will be mentioning, but in my experience there seems to be a general consensus about these terms that I align with. The phrasing I am discussing is disliked because it minimizes or romanticized the cancer experience. Anyways, here are my feelings on these terms:
Describing cancer as a ‘fight’/‘battle’. I dislike this metaphor for having cancer as a fight as it implies winning and losing. Many cancer patients die from their cancer, and to call it losing a fight does a disservice to the person who had cancer. It also implies a certain amount of personal responsibility to ‘fight’, when instead I feel that I am just here enduring treatment. If anything I am a conduit for both cancer and treatment and am just trying to survive.
Saying cancer patients are ‘brave’or ‘strong’. No. We don’t have a choice. We’re everyday people who are terrified. I find people say I am brave as an attempt at complimenting me, but I find it instead becomes an erasure of my suffering and erases my personhood to instead become a symbol. Which sounds cool in theory but when I am talking to you I want to be a person, not an idea or an object.
Calling cancer patients ‘warriors’. In the right place and time with the right person I can be okay with this one. But circle back to what I wrote about being ‘brave’.
Framing cancer as ‘winning’. Win is the last word I would attach to cancer, period. To me, there is no winning in cancer. And if you include win in your vocabulary for cancer there is the implication of loss. Similar to describing cancer as a ‘fight’, I feel that I have little autonomy in my treatment, and how cancer acts in my life is not framed with wins or losses.
Framing cancer with an ‘end’ or ‘over’. It’s NEVER over. We carry mental scars and physical symptoms for a lifetime. Using these words is very dismissive of my experience. Cancer is not a chapter that concludes. It’s a weight that we carry. Maybe we get used to the weight, or maybe the weight gets lighter. But it never leaves you.
‘Cured’. Cancer is not cured. Again, there is not an end. Instead we say ‘no evidence of disease’. Scans cannot 100% prove that all cancer cells are gone. So there is never a complete certainty that the word ‘cured’ implies.
So what can you say instead? Well, a lot of this language exists to simplify the cancer experience and avoid the discomfort of confronting our pain alongside us. As I said cancer-havers are not a monolith. I have cancer buds who use the above terminology on themselves - and thats ok because it’s their cancer. Follow their lead. Ask if it’s okay to use the terms above. But most importantly, instead of turning our situations into digestible metaphors SIT WITH US IN OUR PAIN. Acknowledge that it must be hard instead of calling us ‘brave’ or diminishing or experience to a ‘fight’. Let us talk about our experience. Let us cry.
I can sure as hell tell you that if I’m in a conversation with someone about my cancer and they use these terms I will shut down most of the time. To me it feels like a signal that they need to ease their own discomfort by minimizing my experience. And I get it. My experience is painful. But it can be a little less painful if you scrap the above phrasing in our conversations.
WHAT’S NEXT
Oct 30th - Endocrine Therapy begins - first Lupron shot
What I need right now, from most involved to least involved:
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