Word cloud

Some years ago one of the cancer agencies came up with a slogan \”Cancer: A word not a sentence\”. Clever eh? At one level, yes, fine, being told you have cancer is no longer, as it was once, a certain, and fairly prompt, death sentence. It is just a word, like words for many other diseases and ailments. So, the message was, don\’t panic or despair when your doctor says the dreaded word, stuff can be done, the Titanic hasn\’t sunk yet, even though the iceberg has been hit.

But at another level the slogan is a nonsense. How about this instead \”Cancer: Not a word or a sentence but a book\”? Seems to me that when you hear the word cancer applied to your body for the first time it comes with a cloud of associated words and images and ideas. A book full of words. And the book will keep getting longer.

The first chapter is what you know from general knowledge, the media, etc, with the addition of what you know from personal experience related to family and friends. You have a rough idea of what you are in for, based on that background, and as the disease develops and treatment proceeds, you build up more and more knowledge based on how your body is responding, what your doctor is telling you, what you see in treatment wards. Not just the direct cancer effects, but then the added impact of treatment causing side-effects (physical and mental), which in turn have to be suffered through, dealt with, by other medical personnel using other methods in other centres. It may not be an immediate death sentence (but that threat will hang over you for the rest of your life) but it is certainly a sentence changing your life from that point on. The forecast is cloudy with cannulae.

From the moment that \”word\” is first uttered in your presence your life is altered in a major way, and you could write a book about it. An encyclopaedia even.