Mind Your Language: Why Words Matter

Lukewarm on this article. Various reasons.

I don't care about battle terminology and the reason why is that I think too much time will be spent trying to find wording that will please everyone. How often does that work out? Plus, when you go through chemo, your body almost feels like it was in a fight against someone or something. I don't think the meds for high blood pressure or diabetes beat people down as much as some hard core chemo does. I'm not trying to make value judgements on various diseases, I'm just saying chemo is harsh. That's all.

The anecdote about the doc and the cancer patient where the doc said the first line treatment failed. Geez! He said the treatment failed. And the whole paragraph continues to go on like the doc was being so insensitive because the woman felt like she had failed. He never said that. That is not about words hurting. That is more about comprehension as to what actually was said. Even if he couched his phrases with stuff like "Now, look, it's not your fault or anything, but the treatment is not working..." would that have made her feel better? I'm thinking she would still feel pretty crappy because the treatment didn't take care of the cancer.

Now the thing about an obit saying "lost her battle with cancer" or "passed after a long fight with cancer..." well, it's informative about what the cause of death was, at least. The families generally state the info. they want in the obit, so if the family were to say "please don't use the fight/battle wording" they could probably come up with whatever suited them. I figure if the families don't mind it written that way, who cares what I think. Personally, I'd favor a straightforward way like, "She died from breast cancer." In my mind I always translate any BC obit into,"She died from BC because THERE IS NO CURE."

Traveltext, I'm not trying to negate your liking of the article. Nope, not at all. I just had an alternate assessment of it. I think a lot of writers pen these kind of pieces to create their "look how sensitive I can be about cancer issues" personas. Yeah, o.k., whatever.

I'm am with the author on not going heavy on the blame. At least for now. There's just too much we don't know yet. But if we do, one day, know a LOT more about causal relationships and disease, then there may come a time where we will have to be much more responsible for our own health than we are currently expected to be. As we come to know more, the elements of "luck" and "chance" and "crap shoot" will diminish.

While this latest finding out of Johns Hopkins lets two-thirds of us off the hook, it is too bad that time and money was spent on a study where "luck" was the conclusion. We are not closer to any real understanding then, are we? Maybe they need to look harder.