Silenced by the Language of Cancer

As a cancer patient, you learn a whole new language. Well, it’s regional: I learned the breast cancer dialect; you may be fluent in lymphoma. But we all learn it—no choice, total immersion, keep up or die. 75 visits to the hospital in one year is one heck of a Duolingo streak.

I know the acronyms, all the acronyms! The secretary shorthand that lets us locals have fast, information-packed conversations that tourists can’t even make out words in. CBC: Complete Blood Cell Count. TNM: Tumor/Nodes/Mets Staging System. PICC: Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter. BMT: Bone Marrow Transplant. TNBC: Triple Negative Breast Cancer. QOL: Quality of Life. NED: No Evidence of Disease. This one’s not cancer-specific but common across all cancers, not surprisingly: PTSD. And here’s one I learned especially for cancer itself: FU.

CT, US, MRI, PET . . . I’ve had them all and can deliver a PowerPoint on which ones are loud, which ones are uncomfortable, which ones make you get fully undressed, which ones let you wear pants, and which ones require contrast and that weird feeling of spreading warmth like you peed yourself.

“Surgery” is now just baby talk. We throw out all the official medical terms as easily as listing off our own cousins’ names: mastectomy, oophorectomy, thyroidectomy, hysterectomy.

You know how once you learn a language, you suddenly hear it all around you? The old couple in line behind you at the grocery store; your coworkers chatting in the hallway; your aunt gossiping about her neighbors with the other aunts at a family bbq. My ears perk up with recognition; my stomach sinks with empathy and grief.

All this insider knowledge has changed me. Words have different meanings now, even if I don’t want them to. Some words recall memories and feelings against my will, giving them power over me in a way I can’t stand. “Stage,” noun or verb, only makes me think of one thing—my diagnosis. “Suspicious” is now more than suspicious, it’s heart-wrenching. “Unremarkable” is now a superlative, but it still reminds me of the time my scans *were* remarkable. “Journey” is no longer just a word describing travel, but a word forced upon me that is too impossibly small and one-directional to truly describe my life. “Inspiration” now makes me puke.

Even though I’ve completed active treatment and have no evidence of disease, cancer is still ever-present in my conversations, in other people’s conversations around me, in movies, in news headlines. Cancer has taken away my language and assimilated me into its own. It has left me gasping for the breath of normalcy while drowning in reminders of what it did to me.