I’ve
become used to hearing people talk about cancer as some sort of battle, where
the cancer patient is a brave, strong warrior, fighting against an entity
that’s taking over his/her body. At the same time, I’ve also learned that
cancer cells are actually cells that are produced by our own bodies, abnormal
cells that never went through the normal cell’s life cycle, multiplying and sucking
nutrition until the body gives up. I went on accepting these two things as they
are. That was until this podcast challenged me to see these two things as
pieces that don’t fit.
Since
cancer cells are cells that were once part of your body, shouldn’t battling
against cancer mean waging a war against yourself?
This
was the question that remained in my mind the most as I listened through the
recording.
In the
podcast ‘The Rhetoric of Cancer’, the speaker Andrew Graystone, who was also
diagnosed with cancer, was “struggling to find a good language to describe what
was going on”. He said that he found most of the words used as a “masculine,
military-sort of language”. He went to ask various people who had an encounter
with cancer to discover the rhetoric that they use to talk about this
condition.
He
first went to meet Dr. Wendy Makin, a Macmillan consultant in palliative care
and oncology in Christie Hospital in Manchester, where Graystone got his cancer
treatment. Dr. Makin said that “media sensationalism” would be mostly behind
the phrases “losing the battle against cancer”. She said that the phrase may
also be used by the patient’s family, friends and relatives to recognize the
person’s bravery in dealing with his/her cancer. What struck Andrew the most
was the phrase “living alongside cancer” that Dr. Makin used, which is quite
contrary to the disproportionate fear of cancer that the media have instilled
in the public. I think I agree with Graystone’s view that this whole thing
against cancer is like a “bogeyman that we have created”. He also made me
believe that cancer ought to be seen differently, that seeing it as an enemy
would be declaring a civil war in your body. Nobody should hate their own body.
He then
met with Natasha Hill at Cancer Research UK to find out what language they use
to convince people to support cancer research. According to Hill, they adopted
a stance where they view cancer as an enemy, turning it into a “thing that you
want to fight directly”. The people generally liked this way of campaigning,
though Hill and her co-workers use a different language when addressing elderly
patients. I listened as the two gave their opposing views about cancer: while
Andrew said that he didn’t want to fight a part of his body (he said that he
couldn’t fight his cancer), Natasha said that to most cancer patients, viewing
cancer as some sort of enemy is like a motivation for them to stay strong with
the treatments, a source of will that eventually help them survive. She has a
point—cancer cells may be a part of our body, but the fact that these cells are
working against us should be reason for us to keep them from doing so.
Graystone
also went to University of Birmingham’s School of Cancer Sciences to talk with
Professor Michael Overduin. Out of all the interviews he did, Overduin’s was
the one I liked the most.
Their
talk focused on the small proteins that are involved in how cells grow and
multiply. As scientists, according to him, they study how these molecules work,
how they behave and how to stop them from misbehaving (like in the case of
cancer). The idea of a battle, according to Professor Overduin, is a peculiar
one, because scientists tend to be objective. But since they work alongside
companies who make “warheads” against cancer, they use the term “warheads” as
metaphors to refer to drug molecules that attack a certain “target”, a specific
protein, while avoiding all the other 20,000 proteins that are functioning
properly. The use of metaphors adds drama according to him, to the dry terms of
science, and it also simplifies things. Graystone understood when Overduin said
it’s “difficult to be at war against yourself” and how it seemed
“counterintuitive, almost wrong”. It’s an interesting thing how the scientists
view the whole thing as a series of proteins, away from the negative labels and
metaphors, how they see proteins as “switches” that should be either turned on
or turned off, and how they work together. Instead, Andrew suggested an
orchestra as another analogy, that when one instrument goes out of tune, the
scientists “fix” or “tune” them to make the symphony sound beautiful again.
The
last visit was with Jim Cotter, a poet and a priest who was diagnosed with
leukaemia. He told of an analogy of cancer about his bone marrow being like a
garden invaded by weeds, with the treatment being like a weed killer, but this “weed
killer” destroys the whole garden. So in this view, neither the body nor the
cells are getting the better of the battle, but ultimately according to Cotter,
he had to choose which side he was on. He then gave another analogy of seeing
cancer and normal cells as dark and light angels, where the dark angels
(cancer) serve as a messenger of death to him. Graystone even added that if
anyone says that he lost his battle with cancer, he would personally come and
haunt them!
All in
all, I appreciated every analogy that they used in describing cancer (including
Andrew’s hitchhiker analogy at the end), and it made me wonder more at this
phenomenon of the body. Why do I feel as if these cells in our body have this
element that they can use to “self-destruct” people? Why do they suddenly
become deadly and kill you from the inside? Is this a reminder of the limits of
being human? Something that will always mean that there are things far from our
control?
(by 2013-71244)