Yeah, I cannot tell you how many people leave their hemo's office having no idea what's wrong with them. Dad was diagnosed about 2004, and his hemo pulled out a medical textbook and began reading aloud from it. Dad didn't hear very well to begin with, so that was a comedy of errors.

I always like "it's a benign cancer" or "it's technically cancer but not really." Those seem to be common explanations that have confused people from Quebec to Bahrain.

I am not sure what's so hard about telling someone they have a rare chronic bone marrow cancer that will probably not affect their lifespan or overall health if they control general stroke risk, take oral platelet reduction therapy, and get monitoring as recommended.