The cancer card

I don’t think anything quite prepares someone to hear the word “cancer” dropped into normal conversation. This is especially true for conversations involving someone you know. It’s as if someone has turned off the music and turned on the lights. Everything that appeared glamorous suddenly seems cold, distant, and isolating.

Depending on the party involved, there isn’t always a good way to vocalize your feelings because you are just stunned. It’s easy to think in panic: cancer doesn’t happen to someone I know, it happens to other people.

It all becomes very real, very quick.

Now on the other side of it, I notice how even in my own speech patterns, I can’t always bring myself to say “cancer”. It’s interesting to see how many euphemisms can be substituted for the word. Further, sometimes I feel like a jackass if I flit around the truth. Sometimes I feel like a jackass when I have to use “cancer” as an explanation.

I have noticed that there is a certain amount of grace necessary to navigate cancer as a term.

Cancer is a loaded word. It’s an identity. It contains memories and flashbacks, thoughts and feelings. It’s an association and a description. In day-to-day vocabulary, we all know it has a negative connotation.

When I’ve used the word, the variety of reactions hardly astounds me. Sometimes it’s greeted with hopeful grimaces. Sometimes pity. Sometimes, brushed off and not even acknowledged, like I’ve just informed the person that I have a paper cut: “oh, that’s too bad”.

Each of us deals with the cancer bomb a different way, but when it goes off, it smells like fear and dread.

It’s sad that as a society, because of what it represents, cancer is an explanation of its own. As I’ve been navigating issues related to working, school, and finances, using the cancer card has had its benefits. In a small way, it’s nice that the majority of people understand, and they don’t require me to explain why I feel a certain way a certain time of day.

By no means do I want to use the cancer card to make other people feel bad or to get my way (see the jackass comments above), but there are times when it’s the only description that is adequate.

As in, I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass: I have cancer.

When I go to my oncologist, I see other patients and it’s amazing to me that you can tell who has been touched or traumatized by cancer. Sure, there are visual cues, like missing hair, but it’s in their eyes.

It’s remarkable how they don’t look sad, just resigned to what is happening, at peace about their progress, and hopeful about their fate.

Rarely do I see anger and it’s the compassion I feel from other patients that gets me choked up. It makes me want to be stronger for not only myself, but my cancer peers as well.

No one wants to sign up for cancer voluntarily. But, perhaps holding onto the cancer card isn’t so negative and awful as we perceive.