From taboos to tattoos.

In 1769 Catpain Cook carried two new words for the English language in the HMS Endeavour and they find themselves together again in the luggage of today's blog.

Taboo – an area deemed by society to be forbidden; an unmentionable topic or word.
Tattoo - made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment.

Even if you think I’ve been open in what I’ve written about in this blog there are a few taboo areas I won’t venture into which may leave you disappointed by the end.
I would not have been able to tell you my story without predecessors stripping away those taboo areas and claiming the language and the subject they represent, including the prevalence of the small symbolic pink ribbons tied discreetly to lapels as a quiet everyday reminder, or the more brazen campaign of a thousand bras tied to railings as a one-off shock campaign to remind us that breast cancer should not be a hidden, unmentionable, taboo.

If “Careless talk costs lives” was a valuable wartime motto, could “Careful talk saves lives” be a useful motto in the war on cancer? Has the fear of talking stopped people from making that first step to the doctor? All too sadly, we know from personal experience and from statistics that this is likely to be true.

We’ve come a long way. The very word ‘cancer’ was taboo for years. People, afraid to admit the cause of death, whispered it, called it something else as if the ‘comatose minotaur’ would awaken in them unless charmed by the magic of the Goddess Euphemia and her secret language. I remember it as a child and felt the air chill as someone lisped ‘Cancer’, the “he-who-must-not-be-named”, the Lord Voldemort of our times. Bravo then to those brave enough to shout out the word ‘cancer’ in public, and bravo that they name the taboo body parts including uterine, ovarian and prostate. Keep shouting; your voices echo down the labyrinths and terrify the minotaur.

What is it that makes these words taboo? Is it their sexual connection? I fear it is. The taboos of old stick. Do we still, after all, like our grandparents’ generation, fear that cancer steals the function and attraction from the place where it is found? This must be it, and the taboos are sticky indeed.

Let’s not be afraid to seek help, to talk about the symptoms, the treatments and the cures; let’s deal with the disease with a proper vocabulary as early as we can so we have the best possible prognosis.

Yet there is still work to be done. If, in writing this blog, I have trodden on the toes of some taboos and made them squeal a little, then good, but I’m not brave enough to take all the taboos by the nose: self-perception and the sexual connection remain an unmentionable. It takes time to beat down the irrational belief that cancer steals our function and attraction.

And the tattoo? The taboo curtain has dropped. This will be something to laugh about in time, but for now, I borrow once more from the cryptic phrase-book of Euphemia: the tattoo they can offer me in March is an artistic illusion that something lost can be found.