When friends have had medical issues or surgeries, I've been struck by how often they rhetorically distance themselves from what's happening or happened by the words they use.
Like the friend facing heart surgery who never once said "my heart" but always "the heart." As if it didn't really belong to her, was somewhere not very close, or the only heart around, or she actually lived in an alternate universe where hearts had an independent identity.
Likewise, more than one friend dealing with knee surgery of various kinds has talked about "the knee" as opposed to "my knee."
It makes sense, I guess. Pain, illness, operations are frightening, and making them safer and more palatable is a reasonable defense mechanism. So I understood the urge, but resisted it, I thought, until a recent consult with an orthopedic surgeon about a toe I'd damaged one night stumbling around a hotel room that had weak nightlights.
I asked, "What do you recommend for the foot?" It didn't seem to register with him as he explained a possible outpatient surgery, but it irked me. I was clearly infected, because as Laurie Anderson sings, "Language, it's a virus."
What the hell. This is not the micro, it’s my micro.
(This piece originally appeared in *82)
Lev Raphael edits, coaches, and mentors writers at writewithoutborders, based on forty years of experience publishing, editing, and teaching at universities, writing conferences, and online. He’s authored twenty-seven books in many genres and has seen his work appear in fifteen languages.
I've noticed just the opposite. That people will say "my cancer," etc. Hmmmm...