UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology January 1, 2022 - Flipbook - Page 48
UCLA RADIATION ONCOLOGY JOURNAL
THE COMBATIVE LANGUAGE OF CANCER:
A PLEA FOR AN ARMISTICE
" Listen to your patients. You are not as important or interesting as they are."
C
ancer is talked about like few other
diseases, often framed from the
beginning as a fight to the death. Cancer
cells are enemy invaders, which we destroy
using weapons in an oncologist’s arsenal.
We mark our progress in terms of military
sophistication, from the carpet bombs of
chemotherapy to the smart bombs of targeted
therapy. We rally the troops, soldier on, hope for
a magic bullet. Some beat cancer and become
survivors. Others lose the battle.
How does this aggressive language affect a
patient’s experience with cancer?
Confession: I’m an intern, and this topic has
been written about by people far brighter
and more experienced than me, but I want to
discuss it through a different lens, using the help
of someone I view as an expert on language,
someone who changed my understanding of the
power of words.
Before going to medical school, I studied fiction
writing from 2010 to 2012 in the University of
Oregon Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts
Program, which is where I met Ehud Havazelet,
a writing professor, pillar of the department,
and, eventually, my thesis advisor and mentor.
Ehud had a reputation for being as intimidating
as he was brilliant. He did not tolerate hollow
writing. He would start our regular meetings
by asking, “What’s the most painful thing
happening in your life?” He wasn’t one for small
talk.
I never turned his question back on him. I’m not
sure how he would have responded. Possibly
with a joke—Ehud had a dark sense of humor.
After reading my first short story, he said, “This
is actually good. When we met, I thought you
were an idiot.”
Ehud rarely talked about his cancer. I found out
about it from other students, and I didn’t learn
until later that he had leukemia and was in
remission after a bone marrow transplant. The
first time I heard him mention it out loud was
in workshop, a class in which we critiqued the
short stories we had written. My fellow students
and I would give generous and gentle and
sometimes misguided feedback, which sooner
or later would trigger Ehud to swoop in with his
own far superior reading of our work, analyzing
the strengths but also enumerating the many
flaws we hoped no one would notice or hadn’t
noticed ourselves. On this day, Ehud was so
disappointed in the quality of the stories that he
said they weren’t worth our time to discuss.
“I don’t have time for this,” he said. “I have
cancer.”
He did not say this out of malice, but out of
urgency. Ehud took writing, and us, more
seriously than I had thought possible. In his
view, I believe, a story could save someone’s
soul. He referred to his favorite authors as God,
a word he didn’t throw around lightly. The son
of a rabbi, Ehud was born in Jerusalem and
raised in an Orthodox Jewish household in New
York City. He studied literature like sacred texts.
Characters on the page, if written about with
insight and honesty, became real; they drove the
plot, not the other way around. During one class,
Ehud shared his humbly titled list of “The 10
Most Important Things You’ll Ever Hear About
Writing.” Rule 1: “Get out of the way. You are not
as important or interesting as your characters.”
(Because no story is complete without an
ending, here is his tenth and final rule: “Never
use the word chuckle. Ever.”)
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