Interesting article LB.  Thanks for sharing.

"Prostate cancer is sometimes described as a cancer you die with, not a cancer you die of. "  My guess is that this is because of earlier detection and possibly better treatment - years ago I would not have thought this statement to be as accurate as it might be today . . . my father had prostrate cancer in the early 80's and did die from it.  It was not detected until it had already spread too far to be able to treat successfully.  So much has changed in the medical field over the years, as has been shown in this article.

I don't thing the terms necessarily have to be changed, people just need to be made aware what a diagnosis actually means.  MRIs are not called NMRIs (as they are based off of NMR) but the N was dropped.  Why?  It stands for nuclear.  Taking the word out doesn't change the fact that it's based on nuclei spin.  Some products are labelled as 'chemical free' because people are afraid of chemicals.  I like chemicals, we need them to breath, to stay hydrated, for our cells in our bodies to exist, to have something to eat, etc etc etc.  I think we do a disservice to people by just changing what we call things instead of educating them that a scary word isn't really so scary.  Maybe I just have too much faith in the ability to educate people.

Chemgal - I agree that education is the key.  As a result health care professionals have to be careful with the language they use.  Some professionals tend to over jargon the conversation - I suspect but can not prove, this is a way to deflect the emotion and make the discussion neutral.  Others tend to over simplify and this I suspect is because professionals tend to think nonprofessionals are not educated enough to comprehend the discussion.

Generic language or jargon will hinder decision making.  People generally hear what they want or expect to hear particularly in stressful situations like health.  The word "cancer" for many equals "death" or "long painful recovery".  For some, that latter connotation may influence their treatment decisions; particularly in the elderly who will forgo treatment because they are "at the end anyway".

Education that shows that "Cancer" is not one illness and therefore does not have one prognosis is important.  It will impact not just the attitudes of individual patients and their families but also caregivers, support workers and even people in the community.  How we interact with people - give hope or resignation - plays a significant role in the final outcome. 

If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself. But people-and especially doctors- had doubts about normality. They weren't sure normality was up the job. And so they felt inclined to give it a boost.
      Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
 

One thing to keep in mind is a lot of men don't develop prostate trouble, cancerous or otherwise, until fairly late in life. Certainly after middle age. In generations prior to the last couple, you usually died of something else before a late, slow developing cancer like many prostate cancers had time to become fatal. Now that a lot of those "something elses" (other cancers, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases, etc.) are preventable, treatable or curable, we men are living longer and prostate cancer is now getting a chance to be deadly. At least that's the explanation for that quote that I've seen in the past.

Mercifully (speaking as a middle aged male), with regular prostate exams, PSA tests and improving treatments, we are also becoming better equipped to deal with it.

Mendalla

I'm not sure what the answer is for this.  I'm looking at it from the other side right now, since my husband has cancer.  What I've found through talking to people is that most have an idea of which cancers are easier to treat than others, so when I say he has melanoma, the usual response I get is that it's so easy to treat so that's good...with no understanding or recognition that it's only easy to treat if it's caught very early.

It makes for some difficult conversations because people generally want to offer encouragement or hope, but when they don't know what they are talking about, it doesn't actually help in any way.  Do I explain more, thus totally depressing them, or do I just smile and nod and say thanks? 

I guess what I'm saying is that I WANT the word "cancer" to feel big and ominous, and then a good prognosis is a wonderful surprise for people, because it really sucks to have to explain again and again that, no, it wasn't caught early, and no, it won't just be cured by having the melanoma removed, and yes, cancer DOES still kill people.  My experience has shown me that most people don't think cancer is a big deal anymore and I think it's time to make people understand that it's NOT cured yet.

(BTW, I feel the same about AIDS...teens especially see it as something that can be managed, much like diabetes, and they don't take adequate precautions because "it can't really hurt them.")

LB, my mom had colon cancer, breast cancer and skin cancer.....and Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.  

it was the non-hodkins that finally resulted in her being sick enough to die of pneumoia at 87

Did cancer kill her -- well, yes, but really, she had led a good life..and was ready.

so.......yes, i think the word cancer has definitely less weight now than it did 30 years ago.

More weight - less weight - it depends on which side of the glass you are looking through.   

Once cancer was very much in the periphery of my world - something other people worried about.   Yes, it was there on my husband's side.   His mother died at 80 of liver cancer.   Then two of his older brothers died of prostrate cancer also at around  age 80 - and Seelerman began having regular blood tests.     But in my family - I used to joke that we don't live long enough - my mother died of kidney failure at age 40, my dad of stroke at 56.  

All that changed when I saw the surgeon's face and listened not only to her words but to the tone of her voice when she came into the hospital room after the first lumpectomy.   She had removed the large mass that they were concerned about and it looked good - but hidden under it, right up against the chest wall, was a thumbnail sized hard disk that 'I don't like the looks of.'   She had removed it as well and sent it off for diagnosis.   Well, many of you have followed me and my daughter through the weeks and months that followed, as we dealt with level 3, stage 3, breast cancer - and all the side effects of treatment.  That was a year ago - she is still struggling to regain her strength.   And whenever I think of it I tremble.  

Is 'cancer' the right word?  the best word?   

An older man tells me that he goes to the hospital every so often to have 'these two little abrasions on my face burned', because they are cancer.  No worry - it's not serious.   And a young man named Terry Fox discovers a mole on his leg and despite amputation he died of cancer.     It can't be the same thing.  

A few years ago, before my ears became attuned to the naunces of the word, a friend developed a particularly fast growing breast cancer while in her early 40s.  Agressive treatment and she was gone in a year.    Her mil had passive treatment for breast cancer for twenty years and died of something else.    Not the same disease at all. 

Everybody we met on the cancer floor at the hospital had a different story - different types, levels, stages - different treatments.   Sometimes surgery, chemo, radiation in that order.  Sometimes the order switched around - chemo to shrink the tumour before surgery.   Sometimes a second, or third, surgery.   Sometimes no surgery.   Sometimes either chemo or radiation, but often both.    

Would it help to always identify:   Prostrate cancer;   breast cancer, lung cancer, cancer of the brain, luckumia?    Would it help if the different types, stages, levels of breast cancer had different names?     As Mists says, you don't always feel like going into all the details - but when you feel you are looking death in the face, you don't want to see people react as though it was a little cold - neither do you want them to look at you with pity as though it is already over.   Each day is precious - whether they be few or many - and while there is life there is hope.  Medical science is developing new treatments every day.  Each patient is different and will react differently.  And miracles do happen.  

Cancer - to be taken seriously - yes.   the end - no.  Not yet.

Seeler, today, I had the chance to ask why  MrX's name was in the bulletin.  He isn't that old, and has always been in good health.   As it turned out he has only days to live, as was diagnosed just a few months ago.

i am sad for his wife and family, and for his church family. He is a kind, good man, and will be missed and had just started his retirement.

Cancer is just a word. Like all words it's meaning change over time, and also it means different things to different people at the same time.

When I was diagnose with Karposi Sarcoma, it was considered a cancer. I was referred to radio therapy to lessen the anxiety over radiation treatment. it made me more anxious to realise the doctors were scared to tell me the "truth" in plain language. At the time, i was given a prognosis of 6 month to a year, so why should they say radio therapy instead of radiation treatment.

Ironically, it turns out that karposi Sarcoma is not technically a cancer. Cancer is a unregulated cell growth, of a single type of cell. Karposi/s is unregulated cell growth of two or three distinct cell types.   Thus it does not fall under the medical description of cancer. It is howver much deadlier than most cancer when one has a supressed immune system due to HIV.  Luckily for me, by the time I was ready for pallative care , I was able to enroll in an experimental trial for HiV which worked and thus my immune system was able to beat off the KS`.

Because it name iincludes Sarcoma, KS is the only non cancer that is called a cancer.

This is further proof to me that Wittgenstein who is a philosopher who says simple words have no meaning.  It is the narrative that the words are used in that contain meaning.  Thus there is no way to misuse a word, only to misuse a narrative.

Thus while words have power, it is only because we give them power, that they have it. Some will give them power, while other will not.