Writing about cancer...

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WatchJessieGo
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Writing about cancer...

#1 Post by WatchJessieGo »

Okay, so I'm writing a short kinetic novel in which a girl is told she will die in two months due to cancer that had long gone unnoticed. Not knowing much about cancer and just going off of what I saw an X-Files episode, I gave the girl nasal cancer. Basically, she gets a nosebleed, faints, goes to the doctor, and is told she has a large cancerous tumor in her nose and that she would die soon.

See, now... I don't even know if that would make sense medically speaking. She's definitely going to die at the end of the story, so I need this to be terminal, whether the tumor is inoperable or the cancer is so advanced that any treatment would be effectively useless.

I tried doing some research, but all of the medical terms are confusing me, and I really just want to know if it's possible to have a cancerous tumor in your nose that cannot be operated on due to its position, or even just cancer that's so advanced that attempts at treatment would be useless and deteriorate the quality of life that this girl has left.
If not, does anyone with any basic knowledge of this stuff have an alternative form of cancer in mind? >.>

Sorry if my questions are stupid, and thanks in advance for any help!

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Re: Writing about cancer...

#2 Post by LateWhiteRabbit »

Does it HAVE to be cancer? Or do you just need a way for the girl to die at the beginning of the story and for her to be able to see it coming? It'll probably come off as really insensitive if you don't know anything about cancer to use it - especially since you're killing the character with it. It might be worth investigating alternate means of killing your character that you now more about if cancer isn't a vital component of the story.

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Re: Writing about cancer...

#3 Post by HumbertTheHorse »

Cancer is just cells that have lost the knowledge to stop multiplying. If it is lumped together, an attempt may be made to cut it out. Chemotherapy kills multiplying cells. If the cancer she has is fast growing, the faster the better, chemotherapy has a chance of killing it. Radiation works by bombarding small localized areas and essentially killing it. Because cancer is just a normal cells which don't know how to stop multiplying crude killing techniques is the best they have.

Once the cancer spreads, often after it reaches the blood stream, or techniques fail to kill all of it - chances are bad. All it takes is one cancer cell that is too small to see and within three to five years it will multiply and spread to a size that disrupts the bodies functions.

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Re: Writing about cancer...

#4 Post by WatchJessieGo »

Really, any terminal illness will work. I just thought of cancer first and went with it, but soon realized I didn't know much about it.
All I need to know is that I'm portraying the illness accurately. The story is about the relationship between this girl and her boyfriend, and how they cope with the news, so the details of the cancer (or any other disease) won't come up quite frequently - it's the fact that she's dying that will be the focus. However, I do need to know that I'm portraying it accurately.

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Re: Writing about cancer...

#5 Post by Sapphi »

WatchJessieGo wrote: I tried doing some research, but all of the medical terms are confusing me, and I really just want to know if it's possible to have a cancerous tumor in your nose that cannot be operated on due to its position, or even just cancer that's so advanced that attempts at treatment would be useless and deteriorate the quality of life that this girl has left.
If not, does anyone with any basic knowledge of this stuff have an alternative form of cancer in mind? >.>
You could do what they did in Full Moon. Mitsuki had cancer of the throat but while an operation was possible, she didn't want to do it because she was afraid she wouldn't be able to become a singer. Maybe your character is really vain and doesn't want to have surgery on her nose, so she just decides to die beautiful?

But, yes, if cancer has advanced enough and metastasized to other parts of the body some people prefer having a good last few months rather than suffering through treatment which may not cure them anyway. :(
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Re: Writing about cancer...

#6 Post by Applegate »

Maybe your character is really vain and doesn't want to have surgery on her nose, so she just decides to die beautiful?
Google "nasal cancer", and this argument loses a lot of strength. (not recommended if you're weak of heart) Having nasal cancer does not improve your beauty.

I don't recommend using cancer at all; it's a sensitive subject to some, and your own lack of knowledge would hamper. F'rinstance, saying she has a "large nasal tumour" which she only detected after a nosebleed is a bit silly, considering large tumours are visible on the skin.

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Re: Writing about cancer...

#7 Post by redeyesblackpanda »

There's always the "ambiguous terminal illness" :wink:
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Re: Writing about cancer...

#8 Post by Sharm »

Perhaps a blood clot that's traveling to her brain or a loose bone too close to a major artery? The nose bleed could be a minor stroke and she then finds out a major one is on the way which can't be stopped. Of course, both these ideas would make her death day a big unknown.

Do you know anyone who has a major illness? I would suggest talking to them a bit about how that affects them. It doesn't have to be terminal, just life altering. It'd be really easy to make this sound superficial or false to anyone who has dealt with this sort of thing in their or their loved ones life.

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Re: Writing about cancer...

#9 Post by Tetiel »

Just a correction, Scully didn't quite have nasal cancer. Nasal cancer is usually operable because of its location, I believe. One of my relatives had a form of it. She had to get a prosthetic nose after they removed half of her nasal cavity, but she lived for years afterwards. What Scully had was a cancerous growth between the sinus cavity and the cerebrum. It would have been located in the sinus cavity above the eyebrows as that is what drains into the nasal cavity. Between the sinuses and the brain, there is only a relatively thin layer of bone, which is presumably where the cancer was located. That type of cancer is feasible and it could probably work.

The prognosis of any cancer depends on the location as well as what type of cancer it is. Saying just skin cancer or lymphoma isn't accurate enough. In each of our organs, there are many different types of cells which can produce cancer. In skin cancer, for example, you'll have three main types, but one (melanoma) is much more aggressive than the others. What makes most cancer cases deadly is when they metastasize (spread) to other organ systems, slowly killing them and taking over the body until the "host" dies. Cancer is essentially parasitic in nature.

What makes most cancers inoperable is when they reside too close to vital organs (or in vital organs like the brain, pancreas, heart, etc) or that it has spread to the point that it is too difficult to properly remove. Inoperable is usually a temporary term since some treatments like chemo or radiation can shrink the tumors to the point that they can safely be removed. Everything is a purely case by case basis. Some people do choose not to receive treatment because it is pretty much certain that they would die and the side effects would make them suffer more. Cancer is hard because what she has almost must be included into the storyline. She'd have so many symptoms making her suffer as the disease progresses that I think it's unavoidable, unfortunately. Like others have said, without personal knowledge of it, it's probably best to avoid it since it's so close to people's hearts.

After poking around, it's a REALLY hard thing to find terminal illnesses that effect young adults without having symptoms present in childhood other than cancer. I imagine you could get away with a heart defect where she is put onto the heart transplant list but doesn't get a replacement in time. I realize it's been done before, but I'm sure that you can make it so that it's more about the relationship between the two of them and avoid unwanted comparisons to other works.

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Re: Writing about cancer...

#10 Post by WatchJessieGo »

Now I'm not really sure what to do... I guess cancer is really too touchy a subject for me to go about writing without proper knowledge of it.
"Ambiguous terminal illness" feels kind of like a cop-out, even though it worked for Clannad. And I'm not really sure how I'd write that.
The story will focus on the relationship between this girl and her boyfriend and how they choose to spend their remaining time together. I need her to have a terminal illness that will get progressively worse as time goes on. Within the first month, the two are going to get married at city hall (no ceremony, just signing the marriage certificate) and have sex for the first time. If she would be too weak at that point to have sex, I'm not sure what to do.
There's also a scene the day after they return from the hospital (they had been there a couple days) where they play around a little on the beach, somewhere the heroine had been wanting to go.
It wasn't long until I could tell May knew where we were going. She knew the direction the beach was in, and she quit asking questions.
As we arrived, May's attention belonged to the ocean as she looked sideways at the sparkling blue water, her head cradled in one hand as she smiled.
Without saying a word, her free hand found mine as she continued staring at the water, and she squeezed it and held it tight. I squeezed back.
We parked the car and sat quietly for a moment, still hand-in-hand, then May turned and looked at me. Her smile broke into a grin, and she hopped over the side of the car, not even bothering to open the door, and went running for the beach, kicking off her shoes.
I hopped over my side of the car, though not quite as successfully. May saw this, and I could hear her laughter. I couldn't help but crack up too.
I went running after her, and caught up pretty quickly. I grabbed her by her waist and lifted her up, swinging her around. We were both overcome with laughter and eventually dropped to the sand in a collective heap, completely out of breath.
If I were to go with "ambiguous terminal illness," how would I write that without it seeming like a cop-out? I don't want the readers to be like, "yeah, whatever" because the heroine of the story is dying from something completely made up and not even named.

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Re: Writing about cancer...

#11 Post by redeyesblackpanda »

Pulling off something like that just takes skilled writing and careful thought. You want to make your reader feel emotions, and you want to keep things believable. Not everyone is going to say "I'm dying from [diseasename]." Sometimes, the disease can be implied. You might even be able to get away with the "No idea what it is, but the symptoms say you don't have much time left" if you write well. :lol:
I wouldn't say that there's a formula to make it work. 8)
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Re: Writing about cancer...

#12 Post by LVUER »

I want to know how old this girl is... the younger she is, the easier you can go with mysterious disease as the excuse to kill the girl. Of course it's not really a mysterious "magical" one, the adult (the doctor, the parents) know what it is, but as a little girl, she only know she is dying. But this excuse won't work if she is an adult too...
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Re: Writing about cancer...

#13 Post by Zylinder »

I think brain cancer on certain parts of the brain is inoperable, so you can go down that road if you want cancer. You can always pull an Ace Attorney and invent a new, special disease. It's a pretty forgivable tactic, assuming you as a writer can pull it off. After all, your readers are most concerned with the story, not the disease itself.

Personally, as a reader, I'll forgive just about any made up thing as long as it's believable. The only time I sigh is when the sentence "There is a top secret, unknown-to-the-general-public group in the nation...", but that's mostly from cliche than making up itself.

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Re: Writing about cancer...

#14 Post by wulfae »

Cancer is such a hot button topic, nearly everyone has been affected by it in some way. I think you could use it, but you really would have to know more about whatever kind you're using. Perhaps if you look through all the different ones, you could find something that would work?

I'm pretty sure the details would come up, as well. Especially between the girl and her soon to be husband, which is her main emotional support. It's not only the idea of dying that needs to be worked through, but what's happening inside. How your body is betraying you, how part of it has become this 'other' which is killing you.

You could always lurk on a few support forums, to get a sense of how real people are affected by, and how they deal with this rather horrible thing. A quick google pulls up the Cancer Forums, a group with personal stories about cancer, etc.

Basically, cancer is fine. Just do the research and know what you're talking about. In fact, I'd argue against a mysterious disease, because you'll *still* need to do the research to see how someone reacts to the fact that their life is changing, and coming to an unspecified end. Cancer is something everybody understands, a bit, and it would give you a good stepping stone.

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Re: Writing about cancer...

#15 Post by WatchJessieGo »

LVUER wrote:I want to know how old this girl is... the younger she is, the easier you can go with mysterious disease as the excuse to kill the girl. Of course it's not really a mysterious "magical" one, the adult (the doctor, the parents) know what it is, but as a little girl, she only know she is dying. But this excuse won't work if she is an adult too...
She's 23.

If I decide to stick with cancer, I was thinking perhaps ovarian cancer? Often times it goes unnoticed until it's in its advanced stages and has spread to other organs, so I think it could work.

If not, I guess I could try my hand at "ambiguous terminal illness."

(By the way, thanks everyone for your input and advice!)

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