People know a lot more about cancer now and when my Great Aunt developed it, Kidney Cancer I think that it was,she didn’t want the doctors to tell her anything about it but that was about 1972 and things are different now.I think that arming oneself with knowledge about these disorders and how they are staged is wise.Until I developed Mycosis Fungoides I didn’t know anything about these diseases although I’d heard of Lymphoma, Leukemia,Lung Cancer, Melanoma and whatnot.Quite fascinating actually but you must understand the peril of what you are fascinated by.
1 Like
@Kevan7 “Know thy enemy” as the saying goes.
Had someone say “good luck with your battle” this week and then they stopped and realised that they had just auto responded to the C word.
For the language to change, I guess we, the host party venues, have to be the ones to change it and that included I am afraid some of the ways cancer charities portray it and the personal journeys. Lazy short cuts to fundings sometimes.
I absolutely agree and I don’t hold back on commenting when I see others use that negative language. What we resist persists and ‘fighting’ or ‘battle’ is definitely resisting.
I prefer the term ‘cancer journey’ where we embrace it but we don’t have to accept the prognosis. Words are powerful and can manifest a situation that we don’t intend. A dis-ease is here to teach us some kind of life lesson and has a metaphysical explanation. I prefer to explore what they might be and heal the root cause 
Cheers, Gael 
4 Likes
@gaeln welcome to the madhouse, or @Jimbo165 s world of the Road Runner sponsored by Colgate and under the gentle watchful eye of @Erica .
On the back of serval days of Polycythaemia vera (PV) induced anxiety and tiredness, the language came back up talking to my brother. That I was not going mad or sinking into depression again, it was just my blood stream trying to be the leading partner again.
He lost a partner to cancer, she rang the bell and yet it came back. He said that the words and imagery used made her feel useless at times because that is not how she felt.
These days of tiredness have been a struggle of learning new dance steps, new lessons of dealing with anxiety and learning to focus and not kicking the drummer for getting the timing wrong.
As for the dis-ease, I blame HG Wells, I have invaded earth and now the pesky little kids are evening up the odds.
Good luck Gael with the er re educational program 
1 Like
Hi @gaeln a great big welcome to our forum, I hope that you will find it supportive.
@clickinhistory @Kevan7 @Jules @Duncan @Wullysamba @Willow @Jimbo165 @2DB @CaroleCW
I think the language we use is so subjective and individual.
People often just do not know what to say or how to say it.
Some people find some language helpful, others don’t find it so.
There is no manual.
This is a very personal response and the joy of our forum is that we can mull over such things on here, without judgements, and freely.
4 Likes
A lot of complex language.I had a PET Scan yesterday and I thought that I had had one before but they must have been CT Scans as the PET Scanner was huge and a bit like an MRI which I definitely have had but not noisy inside like the MRI.Very easy to confuse all of these medical investigation devices plus you have Ultrasound and X Rays too.I can see how many people get confused about all of these things.
3 Likes
Good evening @gaeln, and everyone else and welcome to the mad world that we are involuntary members of.
The language used invokes such a myriad of emotions that people can easily get confused as to what can, and can’t be said.
I tell people at work, mostly younger than me (seeing as I am one of the older f*arts there!), that they can use whatever words they want/know/or need to when talking to me about my health, and if they upset me (most unlikely) I will let them know and we can work out some alternative language.
One thing we need to bear in mind is that “we” have some “insider knowledge” of the terminology used by the medical fraternity, language that the “non-travellers” aren’t privy to.
As always, take care, stay safe and be kind to yourselves.
Jimbo165
3 Likes
@Kevan7 just to make you smile https://youtu.be/VQPIdZvoV4g?feature=shared @Jimbo165 will appreciate this one too 
2 Likes
@Jimbo165 strong and just milk and decent dunking biscuits is the only language they need to know
As for insider knowledge, I have booked a training session at the local Ikea for a language course or as my brother put it to one guy at his work (pharmaceutical) “which random letter generator are you using this week?”
As for our choice of language, I guess many have learnt from what we have been told or read about cancer and our relationship to it, a rewriting of mummy’s brave little soldier from our childhood. My question was all about questioning the language and the effect it has on us and the people around us.
Colgate ( other brands are available if willing to sponsor) rules!
2 Likes
That’s an old favourite of mine too 
1 Like
Thank you for the welcome @Erica and @Jimbo165, as you say, to the involuntary admission.
I totally got where you’re coming from @clickinhistory . Being an energy healer and Mind Body Wellness Coach, I will be chatting to friends or family who use ‘fighting’ or ‘battle’ language because that’s so far from the experience I am, and could be, having now or in the future. Dr Masuro Emoto carried out scientific research on the effect that words have on water (and our bodies are a very high percentage of water) and it was dramatic. I prefer to keep a positive mindset about this new journey.
3 Likes
@gaeln positive, negative, good or bad? Two sides of the same coin, personally I am aiming to dance with it and live like water with it.
2 Likes
Last Friday’s leeches visit and one of the nurses asked how my battle was going?
After I and another nurse pointed out it is a chronic cancer and cannot be “battled”, I told her about dancing with cancer instead.
She loved the language as she said they don’t have discussions on what language to use with patients on this journey, they just fall into “traditional” descriptions.
Think we need our blood count results on paddle boards from now on
5 Likes
I guess the juke box is broken and the band is resting so in the words of Sting, I am dancing alone right now till mid March when I see the Aldi DJ again.
It seems to have been a jive since September last year with no let up.
But now is a space, a pause, to reflect on the tunes that have played:
The Tango, when my joints and bones ache.
The Charleston, when my mind is racing and sleep is a dream,
The Waltz, when I go into that trance of life moving around me, but the fatigue slows the tempo.
The Quickstep for those days when my heart races and my breath is short.
The Scottish reel on those days when Polycythaemia vera (PV) is having a day off and life feels normal.
The Jazz free expression when the peritus kicks in.
There are a few more, but right now, I am sitting on the chair at the edge of the dance floor, a whisky in my hand, listening to the sounds of the hall and the bar and feeling thankful the dance judges have not pulled me out of this contest yet.
2 Likes
Great minds think alike, dear @clickinhistory! Adding this on your original topic: Language Matters: What Supporters Say is Not Always What People with Cancer Hear | Leukemia and Lymphoma Society
2 Likes
@Duncan Nice to know you are not the only one who knew it felt wrong (well apart from their views on the word journey, not hikers obviously )
2 Likes
Yep definitely something cultural about the language differences, maybe it’s some sort of holdover from the pioneer spirit that many folks in the US like to project, as if “journeying” through cancer is a way of tolerating it even when we have no idea of our individual destinations. That’s not a road trip I’d want to go on (as Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels On A Gravel Road uncannily plays in the background).
I prefer the idea that I’m now simply living with a random blood cancer rather than imagining it as part of some greater personal quest or personified battle. As an atheist I certainly don’t believe these disorders are divine interventions so that sort of language can be particularly jarring.
But a lot of it, like you say, is due to people just not knowing how to talk about cancers or using traditional descriptions about them. I didn’t have a clue how to talk about cancer before my own diagnosis! Still learning…
3 Likes
@Duncan the journeyman boxer, the refugee, the displaced, the seekers and the lost, the term is moving, the path is only defined by needs, wishes and circumstance. Not using the word journey is in some way a denial of the self acceptance of your situation on the journey called a life span determined by genes, culture, politics and luck.
As a certain Mr Tolkien put it:
"Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known."
An atheist friend once said, " I chose not to believe in the old guy in the clouds or a mother figure under my feet, but it does not stop me swearing at them both at certain times, just in case the Buddhists have it right and I have to come back again"
That is why I love the phrase of dancing with, this random biological reaction happened within me, is part of my make up, altered who I was as much as the bacteria in our guts do, if I learn to dance with it, I learn as much about myself and my body as I do about the cancer.
Institutional medicine, like modern farming, has taken us away from the natural cycles of life, illness, eating for the season which our bodies evolved to do, so we have lost the language to discuss the nature of illness with each other.
But the last word may as well go to Samwise Gangee:
" It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you… that meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something."
1 Like
Well I can’t argue with Tolkien (slight aside, but have you seen The Rings Of Power?), although I’m too preoccupied with a different epic hero’s quest of personal and metaphysical upheaval as Dune: Part 2 is out tomorrow and I can’t wait to see it! I’d be remiss not to quote its Litany Against Fear, which seems rather apt:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
1 Like