When ‘Cancer’ Gets in the Way of Treatment

A diagnosis is more than words on a page. It’s everything that comes with it: the doctor’stone of voice, a gentle touch of the hand, the pauses left so the patient can digest thenews. All of these details subtly impart how you should think about the label that you’vejust been given.

But one diagnostic word in particular threatens to derail any rational discussion of itsmeaning: cancer.

“‘Cancer’ is just this panic word,” said Laura Scherer, a social psychologist at theUniversity of Colorado who studies how doctors communicate risk. Patients comparehearing the term to “getting hit by a truck, like they can’t process anything that comesafter,” she said.

Kirsten McCaffery, a health researcher and psychologist at the University of Sydney’sSchool of Public Health, added, “That ‘cancer’ label is kind of an anxiety bomb that goesoff for patients.”

That’s why some oncologists argue that, for certain early cancers that aren’t at risk ofspreading, the medical profession should do away with the word altogether.