“For me, having lost my husband, it’s frustrating to hear publicly people saying to John McCain, ‘If anybody can beat this you can — you’re so tough.’ Not that it’s intentionally hurtful, but it does leave those of us who’ve lost a loved one thinking, ‘Was my loved one not tough enough? Did he not fight hard enough?'” ~Dannagal Goldthwaite Young @dannagal
In my personal experience of losing a loved one to cancer, I have had that same thought. “Did my love one not fight hard enough?” The situation was that my family member decided not to do more chemotherapy or to participate in clinical trials. She’d had a few months with her cancer in remission before it spread and metastasized. Her brother felt that she needed to “fight more,” to continue with treatment. He didn’t want her to “give up.” It was difficult for all of us. But it was her choice.
Impacts of the War on Cancer
Falling into the “battle against cancer” mentality is easy. Perhaps it is because English can be difficult, limited and constraining in this instance. In a previous post, Snow, Ice and Illness, I wrote about the Sami people who have over 100 words for snow. Because they live with snow, they have specific words that describe the different types of snow: “slushy snow” (Soavli), “thin crust of snow” (Geardni), “new snow” (Vahca) and more.
To cope with this particular restriction of English and the emotional toll of a disease like cancer, metaphors around war and fighting have been our mainstay.
In Susan Sontag’s book Illness as Metaphor, she writes
“Punitive notions of disease have a long history, and such notions are particularly active with cancer. There is the ‘fight’ or ‘crusade’ against cancer; cancer is the ‘killer’ disease; people who have cancer are ‘cancer victims.’ Ostensibly, the illness is the culprit. But it is also the cancer patient who is made culpable. Widely believed psychological theories of disease assign to the luckless ill the ultimate responsibility both for falling ill and for getting well. And conventions of treating cancer as no mere disease but a demonic enemy make cancer not just a lethal disease but a shameful one.”
Anyone who doesn’t think that Sontag’s premise is on target should listen to members of the US Congress. According to Representative Mo Brooks, (R) Alabama,
“It [Trumpcare] will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool that helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy….right now, those are the people who have done things the right way that are seeing their costs skyrocketing.”
So according to Rep. Brooks and others, a child who gets Hodgkin’s lymphoma has not “done the things to keep… [her body] healthy.”
As Edward Halperin recently wrote,
“When we use war analogies for cancer, it implies that patients and their doctors are losers when the patient dies of the disease. The war analogy implies that if the patient and the doctor fight long enough and hard enough, they will be cured.”
Does the language that we use interfere with decisions that physicians and people with cancer make regarding treatment?
In the case of my loved one, her choice of stopping treatment was the right one for her. It allowed her to actually enjoy time with her children and friends. That was important to her and to us. We have memories to cherish.
What do you think?
How do you talk about cancer? What language feels comfortable to you? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
As a survivor of BC once in 1989 and a recurrency in 2001 I feel that I took the treatments the doctor handed out and hoped he new what he was doing. I resent the word fight too cause I was in no mood to fight anyone! I was fortunate, others are not. Sad that so many die from cancer, with all our wonderful scientists there should be a cure for everyone .
We tend to fall back on cliches when discussing difficult or threatening things. The way we offer condolences after a death are a case in point. Any kind of tragedy brings out the “Thoughts and Prayers” statements. Cancer invites a host of such cliches. As a cancer patient, I find very few of them either comforting or encouraging. I have been willing to accept only 2 somewhat reactive statements – “I have cancer. Cancer doesn’t have me” and, my favourite, “F**k Cancer!”. I’m sick to death (no pun intended) of reading obituaries about people who have “lost a courageous battle against cancer”. Since we humans will all die of something, cancer patients should not be the only ones designated as “losers”. That’s my rant😋
As a melanoma survivor since 2010, with a couple of recurrences, I prefer to say that I’m living WITH cancer. Life has its good days and bad, so does melanoma. I’m not in ‘a war’ nor am I fighting a ‘battle’. I’m living each day as best I can.
I don’t believe in the words fighting, brave, strong or courageous. We have no choice when we have a disease. Those words are reserved for those that had a choice. Every time I hear those words connected to cancer, I cringe. I want to educate. But it’s so ingrained in society that my two cents education will only make a small indent. And even with corrections, people fall back into using the words that I just educated them on using. At no time during my diagnosis or treatment did I feel one of those words and many more that I’m sure to have left out.
From Khevin Barnes–Male Breast Cancer.
A lot people talk of their “battle” with cancer. They often speak of the disease as an opponent in a fight, or an enemy at war. I understand the metaphor, but I also understand that the cancer in my body was created by me. It was me, at a cellular level, who produced this cancer within. I don’t’ believe that it is helpful or even beneficial to distance ourselves from any event hosted by us.
Rather than do battle with a disease that I cannot even see, I choose to declare my independence as a ‘conscientious objector”.
I choose to take an active role in my recovery, as opposed to reactive. I talk to my cancer in no uncertain terms, letting it know that I appreciate the “wake-up call” it has given me, but making it very clear that there is no room for it to gather and grow. I also opted out of chemotherapy, recommended to me by two oncologists. My first wife died of ovarian cancer at the age of 47. Her final two years, with clinical trials, experimental drugs, surgeries and lung taps were not good ones. I made my choice back then, and even if my cancer comes back, I’ve had 3 amazing years to live my life and make some contributions to the planet.
The very notion of a “battle” raging within me sets a stressful tone for the work that I want to do and the life I choose to live, and any hint of negativity is, in my view, a fuel for cancer.
Of course I was a year-long resident in a Zen Buddhist Temple studying meditation when my cancer was discovered, so my view of life as absolute perfection even when it hurts, may not be everybody’s “cup of tea”. But each of us has a very personal plan; a prescription for a life with cancer that we’ve written ourselves and follow diligently because we want to survive.
And that I think is the really remarkable thing about human diseases. They call us to action and give us an opportunity to heal. We can’t always be cured, but I believe we can always be healed.
Thank you for your comments and especially for this statement: “We can’t always be cured, but I believe we can always be healed.” ~Kathleen
It’s individual choice how we tackle the disease. The treatment causes a lot of damage. I made an early decision not pursue treatment that made me feel ill ..doctors not happy..dire warnings to scare me into more chemo etc 50 years from now they will look back and laugh at current treatment .
Thank you for sharing your decision and for commenting here. Best, Kathleen
Cancer isn’t another power force in the universe, like, God, satan and cancer. Cancer is one of Gods ways of testing us, and if you can look at it that way, there are many positives that come from experiencing cancer that we can’t get any other way. A level of gratitude for life, for days and hours with people we love. Ability to look at ourselves and our potential versus time we don’t use effectively. Sure, chemo makes you sick. I went through 5 of my 6 R-CHOP treatments with undiagnosed pneumonia which was worse than the chemo – the most aggressive lymphoma chemo there is. But as bad as chemo is, as bad as it makes you feel, it’s a small price to pay for the blessings we have been given in our lives, our family, and we owe it to our loved ones to do whatever we can to get better. To be there for them. I hope you change your mind 😉
No blessings for me. I have learned to live with it but it would have been better not to be sick
Cancer shouldn’t be fought, and shouldn’t be seen as an enemy. It’s not.
If the world was created for our pleasure, and pain is the price we pay for that pleasure, then cancer is one form of that pain that can bring us to the pleasures of gratitude and appreciation we can’t get to any other way.
It takes us out of the track we are on, running without truly understanding or appreciating our lives. If a blind man has an operation and can see for the first time, we understand that in THAT moment, he is the HAPPIEST person in the world! We all understand that – that that moment is the very definition of JOY. We understand THAT. But…we don’t understand why NONE of us, who have had our eyes all our lives, aren’t even HAPPIER than him. We don’t even understand how – 3 months later, that guy takes HIS eyes for granted like the rest of us. Why would he give up that feeling of gratitude?
Why wouldn’t everyone not wake up with the awareness that feeling that appreciate is a choice?
Cancer can give that gratitude to you. That a DAY has meaning. That it’s a gift. Instead of dreading Mondays…cancer gives us the opportunity to truly appreciate every day. We can’t get most of those benefits anywhere else.
Why should the word “fight against cancer” be shameful for us?
Do we not need to mobilize our strength, energy, finances when there is cancer?
Therefore, cancer has a different outcome, because each of us treats it differently.
Someone is fighting as with the enemy.
Someone tries not to pay attention to him.
But, in my opinion, the concentration of forces, energy – is needed.
We need to rethink our deeds, actions, relationships with the worlds around us and people.
Forgive one and all.
Do not live with resentment.
Want to live …Comment