Department of English

See this coverage as it originally appeared at the Penn Medicine News website: https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/she-helps-patients-find-their-words-to...

She helps patients find their words to cast a spell on cancer

By by Daphne Sashin

Even before she experienced cancer herself, Deborah Burnham had a knack for ‘magical‘ prompts to help patients write through their illness at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center.

Getting ready for a memorial service, Deborah Burnham put on a black dress with a scoop neck. She was surprised to see the lump where her infusion port was—she had never seen it exposed that way before.

Burnham isn’t the sort of person to worry much about what people think, but still, she wondered if she wanted to show it to the world—and if so, how?

In the end, she ruled the dress inappropriately formal and saved herself from making the decision. But later, she opened her laptop and wrote an expansive prompt for Writing a Life, the Abramson Cancer Center workshop she has volunteered to lead for over 10 years.

“When cancer and treatment leave their rude and intrusive imprints on our bodies, what do we do? Ports, PICC lines, drains … baldness, prostheses … Do we hide them? Do we let them show, but pretend they aren’t there?”

“On the other hand, maybe cancer has left your body unmarked on the outside. You might be deeply scarred on the inside—your heart, your gut, your lungs. Or your very sense of self, your very soul.”

Then, on a Friday in May, Burnham got on Microsoft Teams and shared what she had crafted with a group of about 10 Penn Medicine patients, inviting them to contemplate the marks of their disease on their bodies and minds.

Emotional stories emerged about what cancer had stolen, and the traces it had left behind. The compression sleeves. The end of long, flowing hair. The feeling of being exposed.

Reading aloud was voluntary—“This isn’t school,” Burnham always says—but those who chose to read received wise and tender comments.

Abramson Cancer Center’s Patient and Family Services began offering the Writing a Life program in 2015 to provide a guided writing space for patients with a cancer diagnosis. In the early years, sessions were held in Penn’s Kelly Writers House; now the group meets virtually every three weeks.

Since almost the beginning, the writing portion of the group has been led by Burnham, a retired associate undergraduate chair of English at Penn. Oncology social workers co-facilitate, providing in-group emotional support to participants and administrative support to the group between sessions. The Cancer Center has offered versions of Writing a Life to patients, caregivers and families, physicians, and medical students, all with a similar structure—and all with Burnham’s original prompts.