Opinion: Listen: Living in cancer limbo
A philosopher with cancer and his wife, a professor of social medicine, examine the language of cancer, Stoicism, and more.
Fifteen years ago, Mara Buchbinder and colleagues came up with the concept of the “patient in waiting.” The concept described a new category of patients created by cutting-edge testing — say, prenatal diagnostics that alerted parents to potential problems, even though they might not appear. The patient in waiting was, quite literally, someone who was waiting to see if they would become ill.
Now a professor and vice chair of the Department of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Buchbinder is experiencing a new kind of patient in waiting phenomenon. Her husband, Jesse Summers, was diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer in 2021. It went into remission — but earlier this year, a test searching for disease recurrence came back weakly positive, suggesting that the cancer might be back but might not be. It put Jesse, and Mara, into a sort of limbo as they waited to see what the result meant.
What's Your Reaction?
