How, then, do you have cancer? And how do you talk about it?

As a religion professor, I spend my days talking—out loud and on paper—about the really big questions of life. My conversation partners, whether they are students, church members, friends, or family, are living those questions, sorting through inheritances, exploring the gaps, striving to be faithful to what they believe to be true. This profession of mine affords me the privilege of getting to talk about God in ways that are always informed by the questions, claims and wagers of others.
Then cancer came along and interrupted the conversation.

As an expert talker, I suddenly was no expert at all. A novice with a cancer story different from any other I knew. Breast cancer was the diagnosis, but my narrative didn’t include finding a lump, removing a breast or losing any hair. A broken back triggered the stage IV cancer diagnosis and a lousy prognosis: five years out, 80 percent of those who have what I have are dead. My lack of expertise, unfamiliarity with the journey, and fear of what lay ahead conspired against me. Cancer left me tongue-tied, groping for words.

I sought out words from others more familiar with cancer than I. In one cancer memoir I read, the author writes about the scene in the exam room after she learns she has breast cancer. She looks at the doctor through her tears and whispers, “I’m sorry. I just don’t know how to have cancer.” The doctor puts his hand on her shoulder and says, “None of us knows how to have cancer.”

Even the cancer experts don’t know how to talk about cancer.

It’s a humble and humbling claim, one I seek comfort in, both in terms of my own bewilderment over how to cope with cancer in my own life and in the lives of others, as well as the challenge of how to deal with those who mean well but offer little comfort at all.

I don’t want to say it’s all relative when it comes to cancer, but those of us with cancer experience and cope with the disease and its effects in wildly different ways. Some passionately protect their privacy; others are exceedingly public with the details. Some head to work every day during treatment; others’ lives come to a halt. But something we all share is this: the havoc that cancer creates in our lives and in the lives of those who love—or simply interact with—us.

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