For most of my professional life, cancer existed for me as data and evidence. It lived in manuscripts, guidelines, survival curves, and carefully constructed sentences meant to inform, persuade, or educate. I understood cancer deeply—but at a distance.
That distance disappeared the day I was diagnosed with cancer.
World Cancer Day often focuses on awareness, prevention, and progress. These are essential narratives. But lived experience adds another layer—one that is less visible and harder to quantify.
Cancer forces an encounter with uncertainty that no amount of information can fully resolve. Even when outcomes are favorable, the psychological shift is permanent. You do not simply return to who you were before the diagnosis; you carry forward a recalibrated sense of risk, time, and control.
As a medical professional and communicator, this experience has sharpened my understanding of how profoundly language matters in cancer care.
When you are on the receiving end, clarity becomes more than good practice—it becomes a form of reassurance. Not false optimism, not excessive detail, but honest, structured communication that respects the patient’s intelligence and emotional bandwidth.
Doctors ask patients to make decisions under stress, absorb complex information rapidly, and live with uncertainty long after consultations end. How they frame evidence, explain trade-offs, and acknowledge what they do not know shapes not only decisions, but trust.
Scientific progress in oncology has been remarkable. Targeted therapies, improved diagnostics, and individualized treatment strategies have transformed outcomes for many cancers.
Yet advancement brings complexity, and complexity can overwhelm if not communicated with care. Precision medicine must be matched with precision in explanation.
Cancer also exposes inequities starkly. Access to timely diagnosis, specialist and holistic care, and credible information remains uneven. Progress loses its moral force if it benefits only a subset of those who need it most.
World Cancer Day, for me, is no longer just a professional observance. It is a reminder of responsibility. Responsibility to communicate with accuracy and empathy. To resist oversimplification without hiding behind jargon. To remember that behind every clinical term is a person trying to make sense of a life that has been altered.
Cancer taught me something I did not learn from textbooks: people remember not just what they are told, but how they are told. Long after details fade, tone, clarity, and honesty remain.
As medical communication professionals, let's help people understand, decide, and live - with cancer and beyond cancer.
