SPECIAL FEATURE
BIOPSY
STAGE
BENIGN
Building
a Cancer
Vocabulary
m
metastasis
?
If
iar language that can make you feel even
less in control.
Understanding cancer terminology,
however, is actually an aspect of treatment that you can control: By build-
10 cancer fighters thrive | winter 2013
CANCER
CELL
ONCO
LOGIST
you are or have been a
cancer patient yourself,
you are all too familiar
with the feeling, as breast
cancer survivor Colleen Logan Hofmeister puts it, of being "blindsided" by the
experience. For many patients and their
loved ones, this feeling of being overwhelmed by the news of a diagnosis and
consequent treatment plan is exacerbated by strange terminology—unfamil-
?
Knowing key terms can help you
feel more in control of a diagnosis.
By Mia James
ing a cancer vocabulary, you will better
understand the details of the diagnosis
and your treatment plan and become an
empowered member of your care team.
According to Andrea Goodwin, RN,
Care Manager at Cancer Treatment Centers of America® (CTCA) in Newnan,
Georgia, "'Cancer vocabulary' refers
to the terms that the nurses, doctors
and providers use to discuss the treatment plan and diagnosis." Some of these
words may be entirely new to you, such
as complicated drug names or obscure
types of cancer. Other words may sound
familiar but have a new meaning in the
context of cancer. "Stage," for example,
is a word you know, but you may not
have previously used it to describe how
much cancer is in the body (tumor size
and whether it has spread from the original site to other parts of the body).
"Cancer stage" was a particularly
important term for Colleen of Long
Island, New York, who was diagnosed
with stage IV (metastatic) breast cancer. "All I knew about stage IV cancer
was that there was no stage V," she says.
As a mother of two who wanted to see
her children graduate from high school
and college, this knowledge alone was
"sobering," she says, especially without
a broader vocabulary to help her also
Photos by Karen Shell
cfthrive.com