Cancer, emotions and the importance of the correct use of words in the face of this disease, “because language approaches or hurts, reassures or tenses”. Article for EFEsalud by Pilar Úcar Ventura, writer and professor of Language at the University of Comillas in Madrid and a patient recovered from acute myeloid leukemia.
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By Pilar Úcar, writer and professor of Language at the Universidad Pontificia de Comillas in Madrid.
“You are going to tell me…”; yes, it seems that it is a fight, that we enter the fight to see who takes the cake in this cancer thing. The state of mind of a cancer patient fluctuates between extremes, it is difficult to find the middle point, the grayness of a disease that scares everyone. Without exception.
It is then, upon hearing the diagnosis, that our brain starts working at full speed, the neurons on alert, the dendrites ready to see what they tell us, to see what happens.
There the words, phrases and expressions take on unusual interest and curiosity…a pure reflection of the hodgepodge of emotions, feelings. Collapse. Cosmic emptiness and panic on stage.
From rage to tranquility, from anger to despondency, from hope to anxiety in a racket that makes us rave; we derail at cruising speed because we lose our footing; reality fades and now we enter another dimension.
Technical terms, words, -itis and –ism…” But, am I going to die?”… Medications, treatment, time, little by little, let’s see, let’s start… An espresso pot in full boil.
Comparisons with someone we know, memories of people who have already been through it, belligerent attitudes… we want to be the protagonists of our story, and of course, “my cancer is worse” than yours, as if there were a ranking.
We hear about everything and everyone. There are always candid souls who encourage: “You’ll see, after your leukemia,
your values will change. One is so “aplastic” that she doesn’t even have the strength to respond to the nurse, whose intention was good, of course, but the formulation of her words offends her to the core (the one that doesn’t work and needs a transplant).
L’esprit de l’escalier is produced, come on, if I run into her again I’ll leave her: “and you, what do you know what my values were before?”
Or in the day hospital someone who comments: “well, you still have a breast; we don’t need them…” We have already established the scale from 1 to 10 in order of relevance which cancer is benign or less pernicious.
“Don’t come to me with nonsense”…How important language is in our lives!! Its correct use, approaches or hurts, reassures or twitches. And in this cancer, more.
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cancer and words
Cancer patients, in many moments of their disease process, experience it as their own right, with a strong sense of belonging, a property that belongs to each one of them, personal and non-transferable.
Hence, specialists have several open fronts: the medical aspect: cure, the personal aspect: empathize. Difficult to match these coordinates. From my point of view the word helps. And I know that the most repeated verb is to have: “he has a tumor, he has to stay, I have cancer…”.
Possession, pure and authentic possession. As a philologist, I recommend using synonyms because we tend to use trunk verbs abusively, those in which everything fits and nothing or little mean; but in this case that concerns us, the verb to have acquires a very real and authentic grammatical category.
I look for other more or less similar synonyms and they don’t add up: “I have breast cancer, I have lung cancer”… no, they don’t work in the idiomatic register.
And if we continue with verbs in this regard, “give” and “receive” arrive according to the implication of each one and the point of view that is adopted in the linguistic interaction: “they give me radio, I receive chemo, we will give him a pill…”, add and continue.
How hard is the language! Those verbs, so common and everyday, that were hardly profitable semantically, that contributed little to regular communication, now become undisputed masters in the future of the disease.
Silent and with tight mouths, enduring our own and others’ grief, we look at each other sideways in the waiting room and with bated breath, we try to guess what phase of treatment the other is in, the other: without muttering a word, the silences they are eloquent and take on unusual importance; scrutinizing eyes, drawn eyebrows, disguised gestures, we display a beautiful pendant on the arm, the famous picc or a catheter as a necklace, hickman, they call it. We observe if we follow the fashion of headdresses or look splendidly bald.
But yes, we reserve artillery for anyone who comes to us with trifles and milongas; we adopt an attitude of “wiseness” and of lived life, of physical and mental suffering that is reflected in verbal and non-verbal language: onomatopoeia, monosyllables, more than thunderous pauses in bland conversations or whining dialogues; we wait for our moment to deal the stab in the back, because “you’re going to find out what’s happening to me”… just bullshit.
For those of us who have suffered from cancer, our gestures and voices, our gaze and our being change. At least for a time, some become “superheroes” and adopt poses and terminology of exacerbated goodness, others burst into expletives from contained fury.
Language and cancer form a dangerous pairing, I don’t know if they agree, much less if the patient accepts and adopts that new language as his own: it is a graft, an accessory that I have not bought, an unnecessary accessory in the outfit.
A hematologist in my isolated room at the hospital where I was cured of my cancer, confessed to me: “yes, Pilarhaving leukemia, is a bitch ”.
Not more more, not more less. The word always to the aid of the patient… “because I am worth it”.
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