The Merits of the Case

I have always loved languages. My favorite subject in school was English and when I got to college I majored in Russian and French. (I also took an ill-fated Italian class at 8:00 a.m. one semester, in which I mostly spoke French because my poor tired mind could only fall back on what was most familiar when faced with Italian grammar and pronunciations that early in the morning.) Languages and grammar make sense to me, and I am lucky enough to have the ability to pick up new languages easily. When I got to law school I discovered that a large part of what I was learning was based on yet another language containing such vocabulary as “equitable servitudes” and “subject matter jurisdiction” and “de novo”. One language that I never planned to learn, however, was the language of cancer.

Being diagnosed with cancer is the equivalent of a crash course in medical terminology. Suddenly I’m throwing around terms like “histologic grade” and “alopecia” and “hormone receptors” as if they are just another slang term. To be on such familiar terms with these words goes beyond what we all pick up during our weekly viewing of ER and enters the realm of too much information. I don’t want to know what “lymphedema” means, and I don’t want to include the definition of “in situ” in my new store of Latin terms.

But I don’t have a choice if I want to understand what’s going on. In between my reading of Evidence chapters these days, I can be found sitting at my computer reading up on chemotherapy treatments and the long-term prognoses of other breast cancer survivors. Sometimes I think that all the medical information is going to take up all the room that is supposed to be reserved for legal information. Hopefully I can find the room for both.

I am on the train on my way to my second Evidence class period as I write this, and I find myself looking forward to my time in class just as much as I suspected I might. Only one other student in my class (and the professor) knows that I have breast cancer, so when I’m there I don’t have to be “okay” or reassure anyone that I am feeling fine. My classmates don’t expect me to be feeling any other way right now. It’s as close as I can come right now to a mini-vacation from thinking about breast cancer.