Dear Cancer,

Whether it’s “you have ___” or “you may get __ if ____”, or “since you’re a high risk for ___ we should do ___” I don’t think it matters much because the only real thing you hear at first is the one horrible word, cancer.
Why does your one name carry so many meanings? I don’t know many other words in the world that can mean so much, yet sometimes mean nothing at all. Well, I don’t know that it ever means nothing at all – but we use the word so much in warnings (as in on cigarettes) where people don’t heed the warning – that I can only imagine it’s one of the few times where your name means nothing at all to people. Too bad too because I wonder if we feared your name as much as we do when a doctor says it as when a warning says it we might not have to have as many doctors ever say it.