The Language of Diagnosis: How Cancer Patients Create Metaphors to Express the Inexpressible

By Darryl Mitteldorf, LCSW

When faced with an unexpected diagnosis of cancer, many patients find that conventional language falls short in conveying the sheer intensity of their experience. Instead, they turn to metaphors—vivid, sometimes jarring images that capture the overwhelming impact of the moment when their lives irrevocably changed. This Malecare white paper investigates cancer-related metaphors, exploring how patients craft these expressions and what value they might provide in articulating an unspeakable reality.

Over decades of patient narratives, a rich tapestry of metaphorical language has emerged. These metaphors act as cognitive tools that translate internal chaos into concrete imagery. Without referencing abstract emotional platitudes, these expressions focus instead on the visceral, physical, and mental sensations experienced when confronted with a cancer diagnosis.

Starting with reports from Malecare’s prostate cancer support community, I used two comprehensive sets of metaphorical accounts—from moments of diagnosis and the broader cancer journey—I found several commonalities, such as a need to express sudden disruption, disorientation and the tangible impact of receiving such news. I try to explain the creation and value of these metaphors to shed light on their role in patients’ narratives.

The Cognitive Function of Metaphor in Illness Narratives

Metaphor is a fundamental component of human language. As Lakoff and Johnson (1980) famously argued in Metaphors We Live By, our conceptual system is inherently metaphorical, influencing how we perceive and interact with the world. Patients confronted with a diagnosis as daunting as cancer often resort to these figurative expressions as a way of structuring an otherwise overwhelming experience.

These moments force patients to articulate sensations that border on the ineffable—feelings of shock, disorientation, and the sensation of being violently uprooted from normalcy. With its clinical detachment, medical language cannot capture the emotional and physical immediacy of the experience. Metaphors, by contrast, offer patients a precise, if unsettling, depiction of a sudden confrontation with a life-altering reality.

Susan Sontag’s seminal work, Illness as Metaphor (1978), explored the power of metaphor in shaping public and personal understandings of disease. While her analysis focused primarily on metaphorical language’s social and cultural implications in illness, the narratives I examine highlight metaphor use’s intensely personal and experiential aspects. For many patients, these expressions are a way of grappling with the raw, unfiltered impact of a cancer diagnosis—a moment marked not by gradual realization but by an instantaneous collapse of the familiar.

Metaphors like these are powerful for their descriptive force and the commonality they share. I am describing the early stages of a lexicon Malecare describes as “patient-speak.”

Metaphors of Sudden Impact: The Moment of Diagnosis

Among the most common themes in patient narratives is the portrayal of the diagnosis as an abrupt, violent shock. The following examples illustrate how patients have described that fateful moment using metaphors of impact and physical force:

“I felt like a hurricane had hit me.”
Diagnosis as a natural disaster’s unpredictable and devastating force that leaves destruction in its wake.
“It felt like I was hit by a truck.”
This metaphor conveys an overwhelming physical blow, suggesting that the news arrived with a force that shattered the patient’s sense of self.
“To say I felt like a bullet was put through me is an understatement.”
The image of a bullet conveys the sudden, penetrating pain and the shattering of internal stability.
“To have this thrust on you… it felt like a bullet to the head.”
Similar to the previous metaphor, this expression emphasizes the immediacy and violence of the shock.
“…a call from my doctor that felt like a sledgehammer to the head.”
Here, the diagnosis is depicted as a heavy blow, suggesting that the impact reverberated long after the words were spoken.
“The diagnosis felt like a tree trunk.”
This metaphor uses the weight and solidity of a tree trunk to illustrate the crushing force of the news.
“…as if a stone had fallen on me.”
The imagery of a stone emphasizes the unexpected, heavy burden that suddenly descends upon the patient.

These expressions reveal that patients experience a profound physicality in their emotional reactions at diagnosis. The metaphors evoke images of force, impact, and bodily disruption, indicating that the initial realization considered by some as an abstract concept–is indeed a tangible, almost physical event.

Themes of Falling, Sinking, and Disorientation

Another recurring motif in these narratives is the sensation of falling or sinking—images that capture the experience of being unmoored from one’s life:

“I felt like I was falling into a hole, a deep black hole.”
This metaphor portrays the diagnosis as a plunge into darkness, where the familiar ground of life gives way to an endless void.
“I felt like I was falling into a deep abyss.”
The imagery of an abyss reinforces the sense of inevitable descent into despair—a journey with no clear end.
“I felt like I was falling off a cliff.”
The sudden loss of stability, as if teetering on the edge of a precipice, captures the abrupt disorientation of receiving a cancer diagnosis.
“‘The dike broke’… I felt that my life was coming to an end at that moment.”
Dam-bursting metaphors allude to an uncontrollable flood of emotion—a deluge that overwhelms all barriers.

The images of falling and sinking highlight a universal experience: the disintegration of the familiar structure of life. In that instant, the secure footing of daily existence is replaced by a terrifying plunge into the unknown.

Overwhelming Waves and Explosive Force

Many patients also describe the moment of diagnosis as akin to an overwhelming natural force—whether through explosions, waves, or other violent phenomena:

“There was an explosion of cancer terms thrown at me.”
The onslaught of technical language is depicted as a literal explosion, leaving the patient reeling from the shock of too much information at once.
“It was just like a bomb went off, and everything around me was debris.”
This metaphor conveys the suddenness of the diagnosis and the chaotic aftermath—a landscape of fragmented, unrecognizable parts.
“I felt like I was drowning and gasping for air and grasping for….”
Evoking the terror of drowning—a struggle against an unrelenting force that overwhelms.
“I felt like I was drowning in words.”
Similar to the previous expression, the sensation of drowning is linked to the barrage of language and information, creating a sense of suffocation.
“It was like the air was sucked out of the room.”
This expression captures the sudden emptiness that follows the diagnosis, drained of all vitality and clarity.
“It felt like a pile of bricks repeatedly dropped on my head from the sky.”
The physical impact of falling bricks captures the weighty barrage of emotional pain after hearing their diagnosis.

The violent imagery of explosions and drowning serves to emphasize not only the shock but also the ongoing struggle to process the diagnosis. In these metaphors, the patients articulate feeling overwhelmed by forces beyond their control—forces that disrupt not just the mind but the entire sensory and physical experience of being.

Surreal Unreality and a Detached Existence

In addition to the physical imagery of impact and collapse, many patients also describe a profound sense of unreality or detachment at the moment of diagnosis. These metaphors highlight the dissonance between what is happening and what one expects of one’s own experience:

“It felt like a nightmare, at first, that I couldn’t quite wake up from.”
The experience is compared to a dream or nightmare—a scenario so unreal that the patient questions its authenticity.
“It just felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone.”
This pop culture reference encapsulates the diagnosis’s surreal, almost science-fiction quality, suggesting that the patient was thrust into a bizarre alternate reality.
“I immediately felt like I was in another world.”
Such language indicates a sudden dislocation from the known as if transporting the patient to a parallel universe where normal rules no longer apply.
“I also felt as if I was in a weird bubble with the world around me.”
This metaphor of a bubble suggests isolation, a temporary separation from the surrounding reality, even as life continues unabated for others.
“I could see the words… in my mind with great cartoon zigzags around them.”
The visualization of diagnosis terms in the mind, highlighted by cartoonish zigzags, underscores the incredulity and mental dissonance accompanying the news.
“I had an out-of-body experience.”
Describing the diagnosis as an out-of-body experience points to a dissociation—a feeling of being detached from one’s physical self and unable to process what is occurring fully.
“Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.”
Time distortion is a common element in trauma narratives. The slowing down of time can be interpreted as the mind’s attempt to prolong a moment of shock, allowing the patient to absorb the unthinkable.
“…it felt like someone else’s life I was watching passed me by.”
Watching your life from the outside hauntingly describes patients’ disconnect as spectators rather than active participants in their own stories.

These metaphors are rich with surreal imagery, underscoring a critical point. The initial shock of diagnosis is an emotional and physical blow as well as a profound rupture in one’s sense of reality. The disorienting interplay of unreal images blurs the familiar boundaries between self and world.

The Value of Metaphor: Articulating the Unimaginable

Cancer patients turn to such rich and varied imagery to describe their experiences beyond the limitations of ordinary language. Patients find solace in using words that set them apart from the extremes of physical and emotional disruption. Metaphors serve several critical functions in this context:

Translation of Sensation:

Physical and emotional sensations mark the moment of diagnosis. When patients describe the news as being “hit by a truck” or “sucked the air out of the room,” they are not exaggerating for dramatic effect—they are using concrete imagery to translate an overwhelming internal state into terms that others can understand. The violence of these metaphors communicates not just the abstract fear or shock but the palpable, bodily impact of the diagnosis.

Structuring Experience:
Metaphors scaffold organizing and interpreting experience. Faced with a reality that defies linear narrative, patients use metaphors to impose structure on chaos. The recurrent themes of falling, drowning, or being struck by force help to articulate a narrative that, while not “logical” in a conventional sense, makes sense of the disordered emotional landscape. As one patient described the news as “falling off a cliff,” they mapped an internal sense of dislocation onto a familiar physical experience.

Bridging the Ineffable:

The raw impact of a cancer diagnosis is notoriously difficult to express using straightforward language. Metaphors create a bridge between the ineffable and the describable.

Describing intense emotions with vivid images—like explosions, hurricanes, or sinking ships—illustrates the depth of the experience and connects patients with a deeper intellectual and emotional resonance.

Cultural and Personal Resonance:

Metaphors are deeply embedded in cultural imagery—hurricanes, falling off cliffs, explosions— filtered through personal experience. Blending shared cultural symbols with intimate personal feelings suggests that patients’ expressions convey their experience’s universality and individuality. Many patients describe the diagnosis as “an episode of The Twilight Zoneor Black Mirror.” These widely recognized cultural references highlight the singular strangeness of their encounter with cancer.

Expressing the Disruption of Normalcy:

Metaphors help patients describe time-specific disruption. The moment of diagnosis is a sudden shattering of expected patterns of thought, routine, and identity. The metaphors of violence, falling, and surreal dislocation are a word-rich representation of patients’ fragmentation. Metaphors provide an alternative form of expression that helps to externalize anxiety and helps to make adjustment more manageable.

A Comparative Analysis: The Spectrum of Metaphorical Expression

Consider comparing the imagery across different stages of the cancer journey. Two distinct sets of metaphors emerge: one set describes the broader journey through cancer—encompassing treatment, the physical struggle, and the long-term psychological impact—and the other is focused exclusively on the initial moment of diagnosis.

Metaphors Across the Cancer Journey

In one set of responses, patients describe their experiences throughout their cancer journey using images that evoke battle, journey, and transformation. Examples from this corpus include:

“I was diagnosed… and it hit me like a tsunami.”
“Cancer is like a hard journey with many twists and turns… It’s like driving a horse-drawn coach without the back wheels.”
“Yes, life (and cancer) is like a baseball game, and we must play it!”
“Cancer is a thief, a time bandit, a dream-stealer, a hope-pincher, a life-snatcher.”

These metaphors often encapsulate the continuous strain of living with cancer—the unpredictable twists of treatment, the sense of a prolonged battle, and the persistent intrusions of the disease into everyday life. They help patients convey how cancer, as an invasive presence, disrupts normal rhythms and imposes a state of perpetual crisis.

Metaphors at the Moment of Diagnosis

The second set, the focus of this discussion, zeroes in on the instantaneous impact of receiving the diagnosis. Here, the metaphors are even more immediate and physical:

“I felt like a hurricane had hit me.”
“It felt like I was hit by a truck.”
“To say I felt like a bullet was put through me is an understatement.”
“I felt like I was falling into a deep abyss.”
“There was an explosion of cancer terms thrown at me.”
“I felt like I was drowning in words.”

These expressions emphasize the diagnosis’s sudden shock and visceral sensation. The common themes—impact, falling, drowning, and surreal detachment—reflect when the patient is overwhelmed by the raw immediacy of the information. Unlike metaphors that describe ongoing struggles or long-term adjustments, these images are fixed on that initial collision of reality and disruption.

The Process of Crafting Metaphors: Cultural Influences and Personal Imagination

How do these metaphors come into being? The process is neither random nor purely spontaneous; it blends cultural influences, personal experience, and the intrinsic human need to communicate complex inner states.

Cultural Reservoirs of Imagery

Patients draw from a shared cultural reservoir of images. Hurricanes, explosions, falling, and drowning are easily understood symbols in Western society. They carry a wealth of associations. For instance, the notion of a hurricane speaks to broad and violent destruction, while falling off a cliff instantly evokes a loss of control and impending danger. Patients can evoke powerful emotions with minimal explanation by tapping into these established symbols.

Personal Histories and Unique Perspectives

Metaphors are filtered through the lens of individual experience. Previous encounters with loss, personal battles, and unique life circumstances shape every cancer patient’s reaction. When one person says, “It felt like I was drowning in words,” while another describes the diagnosis as “an explosion of cancer terms thrown at me,” both are drawing on shared images but applying them in distinctly personal ways. This interplay between the collective and the individual gives these metaphors richness and complexity.

The Role of Imagination in Processing Trauma

In the immediate aftermath of a cancer diagnosis, the mind is flooded with a barrage of sensations that can be difficult to articulate. In these moments, creating a metaphor is a way to impose order on chaos. The imaginative leap required to compare the emotional impact of a diagnosis to that of a natural disaster or violent physical implications is, in essence, a cognitive strategy for processing trauma. By equating the unknown with something familiar—a hurricane, a falling object, or an explosion—the mind creates a temporary scaffold to support understanding in the face of overwhelming uncertainty.

This process is not intended to provide comfort or consolation; instead, it offers a means of communication—a way to externalize and articulate an experience that is, by its very nature, profoundly internal and difficult to share. In doing so, patients contribute to a broader cultural narrative about illness, one that is as much about the language of trauma as it is about the physical realities of cancer.

The Value of Metaphors in Patient Narratives

Using metaphor to articulate the cancer experience holds several valuable functions, mainly when traditional language is insufficient.

Articulating the Physicality of the Experience

A recurring theme in these narratives is the physicality of emotional shock. Phrases like “hit by a truck” or “a sledgehammer to the head” are attempts to communicate the bodily sensations accompanying the diagnosis. In describing the emotional impact in physical terms, patients are making a tangible the intangible. This is significant because it allows both the speaker and the listener to grasp the severity of the experience in more concrete, relatable terms.

Capturing Temporal Distortion and Cognitive Overload

Many patients describe time as slowing down or reaching a standstill after diagnosis. The metaphor of “everything happening in slow motion” is emblematic of a mind overwhelmed by shock—a mind that struggles to process information at its usual pace. Similarly, the image of drowning, whether in physical terms or a deluge of words, encapsulates the cognitive overload that follows immediately after receiving life-altering news.

Bridging the Gap Between the Ineffable and the Communicable

The primary function of metaphor in this context is to bridge the gap between the ineffable nature of the experience and the need to communicate it to others. Cancer is a complex phenomenon that affects every aspect of an individual’s being, yet standard language often falls short. By resorting to metaphor, patients create a bridge between the inner emotional chaos and the external world. This bridge is not meant to simplify the experience; instead, it serves as a conduit for sharing the depth and breadth of what it feels like to be struck by the reality of a cancer diagnosis.

Facilitating a Shared Understanding

Although each patient’s metaphor is deeply personal, the recurrence of similar imagery—such as falling, drowning, or being struck by an unseen force—allows for a shared understanding among those who have experienced the diagnosis. This commonality suggests that, despite differences in personal history or cultural background, the cancer experience has a collective dimension. The repetition of certain metaphors in patient narratives indicates that these images resonate broadly, offering a kind of linguistic shorthand for the overwhelming impact of the disease.

The Limits and Dangers of Metaphorical Language

However, it is essential to note that metaphors can illuminate the personal experience of illness but are not without limitations. The vivid imagery that makes these expressions so compelling can also distort or oversimplify the complex reality of living with cancer. For instance, the metaphor of being “hit by a truck” conveys immediate physical impact but may obscure the long-term, fluctuating nature of the disease. Similarly, while the image of drowning captures the sensation of being overwhelmed, it suggests a total loss of control that does not account for the nuanced ways in which patients manage their experience over time.

Moreover, the reliance on culturally loaded images means that the interpretation of these metaphors can vary widely. What resonates as a powerful symbol of shock for one person might seem trite or overused to another. Thus, while metaphor creation is a valuable tool for self-expression, it is also inherently subjective and context-dependent.

Implications for Clinical Practice and Research

For clinicians and researchers, understanding the metaphorical language of cancer patients can offer essential insights into the subjective experience of illness. Although the primary function of these metaphors is to express personal trauma rather than to provide a roadmap for clinical intervention, they nonetheless shed light on the immediate cognitive and emotional responses to a cancer diagnosis.

Enhancing Communication in the Clinical Encounter

Awareness of the metaphors that patients use can help healthcare providers better understand the intensity of the moment when a diagnosis is delivered. Recognizing that a patient who describes feeling “like a bullet to the head” is conveying an experience of acute physical and emotional impact may encourage clinicians to adjust their communication strategies. Instead of relying solely on technical language, practitioners might consider acknowledging the patient’s metaphorical expression as a window into their lived experience. This acknowledgment, however, must be approached with sensitivity—aiming to validate the patient’s experience without venturing into language that suggests consolation or reduction of the perceived intensity.

Informing Narrative Medicine Research

In narrative medicine, patient stories are essential data for understanding the holistic impact of illness. The metaphors identified here provide a rich source of qualitative data, offering a glimpse into the cognitive mechanisms patients employ to navigate their experience. Researchers can analyze these narratives to uncover patterns and variations in metaphor use, shedding light on the cultural and psychological factors that shape how individuals process trauma. Such research may inform the development of communication tools and training programs designed to improve clinician-patient interactions.

Bridging the Gap Between Clinical Terminology and Lived Experience

Traditional clinical language often emphasizes diagnosis, treatment protocols, and statistical outcomes. Yet, the language of metaphor reveals a dimension of the cancer experience that is deeply personal and profoundly different from the clinical narrative. When patients describe their experience in terms of natural disasters, physical violence, or surreal detachment, they are offering clinicians an alternative lens through which to view the impact of the disease. Integrating these insights into clinical practice may enhance understanding and encourage a more nuanced approach to patient care that respects the complexity of the human experience without diluting its intensity.

Synthesis: The Role and Value of Metaphors in the Cancer Experience

A synthesis of the patient narratives discussed here reveals several core functions of metaphor in the context of a cancer diagnosis:

Expressing the Inexpressible:
Metaphors allow patients to articulate sensations that defy direct description. The immediacy of being “hit by a truck” or “falling into a deep abyss” provides a language that more conventional terms fail to capture.
Conveying Physicality and Sensory Detail:
Using forceful, tangible imagery bridges the gap between internal emotional turmoil and external physical sensation. By drawing on images of physical impact and bodily harm, patients make their experience palpable and relatable.
Structuring the Unruly Experience of Trauma:
Without a coherent narrative for their sudden disruption, patients create frameworks of understanding through metaphor. These frameworks help impose a temporary order on a chaotic emotional landscape.
Establishing a Shared Cultural Language:
The recurrence of specific images—hurricanes, explosions, drowning, falling—demonstrates that there is a common cultural lexicon available to describe trauma. This shared language fosters a sense of commonality among individuals facing similar existential crises, even if the experience remains deeply personal and varied.
Highlighting the Immediate and Unfiltered Impact:
Particularly at the moment of diagnosis, metaphors capture the raw, unfiltered shock that gets lost in clinical descriptions. The immediacy of these expressions—whether it is a “sledgehammer to the head” or an “explosion of cancer terms”—underscores the intense, multifaceted disruption that characterizes the moment when the diagnosis is received.

A Closer Look at the Metaphors: Case Examples

Let’s consider the following case examples drawn from Malecare patient narratives:

Case Example 1: The Overwhelming Impact

One patient described the moment of diagnosis as feeling “like a hurricane had hit me.” This metaphor conveys a sense of an uncontrollable natural force that disrupts everything that once felt stable. The imagery is immediate and visceral, suggesting that the diagnosis dismantled the patient’s world in much the same way that a hurricane dismantles structures and landscapes. For this specific patient, speaking during a support group meeting, the metaphor served as a linguistic proxy for a cascade of physical sensations—disorientation, a racing heartbeat, and a profound internal disruption—accompanying the news.

Case Example 2: The Sensation of Falling

Another patient described their experience by saying, “I felt like I was falling into a deep abyss.” The metaphor of falling is significant in its simplicity. Falling implies losing control and a precipitous descent into an unknown realm. The abyss, by definition, is endless and impenetrable, symbolizing the patient’s perception of an infinite void opening up beneath them. In essense, the patient feels floorless. This image powerfully conveys the inevitable decline and the disintegration of previously secure foundations.

Case Example 3: The Violence of the Diagnosis

A particularly striking expression was, “To say I felt like I got a bullet in my gut is an understatement.” This metaphor uses the imagery of a bullet to conjure sudden, acute pain—a force that penetrates and disrupts the body’s integrity. The violence described in this metaphor is not merely figurative; it reflects the physical shock many patients experience. The language of violence here is unambiguous, underscoring the brutality of the moment without resorting to abstract or diluted descriptors.

Case Example 4: The Surreal Experience

A patient in another narrative from a published dataset said, “It just felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone,” a well-known cultural reference associated with surreal and inexplicable occurrences. This patient situated their experience in a context that is both familiar and unsettling. This metaphor captures the sense of dislocation and unreality that often accompanies a cancer diagnosis. In that instant, the world seems to shift into a parallel dimension where the usual rules no longer apply.

Each case exemplifies how metaphors function more than decorative language—they are essential for making sense of experiences that resist ordinary description.

Methodological Considerations in Analyzing Metaphors

The study of metaphor in illness narratives is an evolving field that straddles linguistics, psychology, and medical humanities. Investigators use qualitative methods to analyze the language used by patients, often using discourse analysis and narrative inquiry to uncover underlying themes. The recurring motifs —impact, falling, drowning, detachment—suggest shared cognitive schemas at work.

By systematically examining these metaphors, some investigators think they are validated insights into the universal aspects of the cancer experience. For example, the frequent use of violent imagery probably indicates a common neuropsychological response to trauma, where the body’s natural alarm systems activate in the face of existential threat. Similarly, the repeated references to falling or sinking may reflect a cognitive model of loss of control embedded in the human crisis experience. However, real-world qualitative reports from Malecare support groups suggest the utility of models focused on adjustment disorder.

Such research enriches our understanding of patient experiences and has practical implications for clinical practice. Recognizing these linguistic patterns can help healthcare providers better understand the emotional states of their patients, even if the primary aim is not to provide comfort or reassurance. Instead, the focus remains on acknowledging the gravity of the experience as expressed through language—a language that is as immediate and visceral as the shock itself.

Challenges and Limitations

Investigating metaphors uncovers valuable insights, but there are also limitations to what we can learn. The subjective nature of metaphor means that interpretations can vary widely.

The wide variety of different patients’ cultural backgrounds, personal histories, and psychological states can invest a single image, such as “falling into an abyss,” with idiosyncratic meanings. Moreover, metaphors with dramatic, violent imagery can obscure the ongoing complexities of living with cancer. The immediate, explosive language that patients use to characterize the moment of diagnosis does not necessarily capture the long-term fluctuations in a patient’s experience.

Also, using metaphors reduces a multifaceted experience to a single, static image. Metaphors can inadvertently confine the understanding of the patient’s experience within the narrow boundaries of the specific expression. The challenge for both patients and clinicians is to balance the expressive power of metaphor with the need for a nuanced, dynamic understanding of what the patient is trying to express. Further, for the clinician, understanding the historical and cultural context of the specifc patient experience provides a sharper and more impactful viewport.

Conclusion

When faced with life-threatening challenges, we create images as forceful and disruptive as the experiences themselves. From being “hit by a truck” to “falling into a deep abyss,” metaphors convey the immediate, visceral impact of a cancer diagnosis. Metaphors provide a linguistic framework for understanding a moment when ordinary language falls short.

These expressions reveal the intensity of the physical and emotional sensations and the cognitive strategies employed to make sense of chaos. The metaphors serve as bridges between the ineffable inner world and the external reality—a means of translating raw, overwhelming experiences into images that can be communicated, shared, and studied.

While the language of metaphor does not offer consolation or mitigate the severity of the diagnosis, it does offer a window into the lived reality of those who face cancer head-on. In these carefully crafted images, we see the interplay of cultural symbols and personal histories, the collision of internal sensations with external language, and the universal human need to articulate what lies beyond the reach of conventional description.

Citations

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By—University of Chicago Press.
Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as Metaphor. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Charon, R. (2006). Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. Oxford University Press.
Surprising strength: Insight from a five-time cancer survivor | MD Anderson Cancer Center. https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/cancer-survivor-surprising-strength-survivorship-cancer.h00-158756268.html
To the Twilight Zone & Back – Ian Schuman’s Story – Melanoma Research Alliance.https://www.curemelanoma.org/about-melanoma/melanoma-stories/survivor-stories/story/to-the-twilight-zone-and-back-ian-schumans-story

Exploring the metaphorical language of cancer diagnosis helps us understand the words chosen and an insight into the profound internal experience that drives these choices. Metaphors are essential tools for articulating an experience that is as immediate, raw, and transformative as it is challenging to encapsulate in plain language. Through this lens, we witness how patients translate their overwhelming internal realities into a shared cultural vocabulary—one that, despite its harsh imagery, speaks volumes about the depths of the human response to the crisis.

This paper explores linguistic phenomena caused by a cancer diagnosis. Investigating how cancer patients enlist metaphors helps us acknowledge the complex interplay between language, cognition, and the lived experience of illness. This interplay continues to shape how we understand and communicate one of life’s most formidable challenges.