to think Cancer Research should rethink some of their marketing?

[MrsCarriePooter]

This is a fairly mild AIBU but interested in what you think.

We were in our local Cancer Research shop this morning and in the window they had a big poster of a woman who had survived breast cancer, but the wording was something about "Vanessa wasn't going to let cancer beat her". I said to the volunteer insider when I was paying that I thought that was a bit offensive, as though those who die from cancer just had decided to roll over and "let cancer beat" them. Was I just being overtouchy? Having had relatives die of cancer I know I could be. The volunteer said "she'd pass my views" on to the area manager.

Thanks Porca. She would have been 36 now.

I am also very moved by this thread.

And you all sum up exactly how I feel, and how angry I always feel when you read about the "fight with cancer" as if it's all down to a bit more positive thinking.

I did not know so many people felt like I do.

Thought I was the odd one out...

I think people (media) portray it as a battle that can we won through will power, as it's a less scary concept that the random devastating cruel illness it is.

Some heartbreaking stories on here - thank you for sharing them. It seems like we all feel the same way, that this talk of "fighting" and " battling" just puts extra pressure on cancer patients who are already facing the worst time of their lives, as are their family and carers.

If I don't survive my cancer, it will be because the treatments haven't worked. Not because I haven't fought it. My responsibility is to do what I can to help the medics treat me, but I can't brandish a metaphorical sword at it or unleash some weapon - that's what the treatment does. All I can do is try to live as healthily as possible and do what the medics advise me. I hate this "victim" terminology too. It takes away all sense of control from the person and suggests s/he just rolled over and let it happen.

I get so cross about it all.

Dementedma I'm not at all offended by the Race for Life event and have done it twice myself in the past. I find it incredibly moving reading everyone's 'in memory of' notices on their backs, even though when I did it my brother hadn't died. I think that such events are positive ways of raising money - the marketing campaign we're talking about (and many others like it) is a very negative way in my opinion.

I also hated the 'I shouldn't be here' campaign that I think CRUK also ran. It was all over the tube in the weeks after my brother died and I found it heartbreaking. Now I'm thinking about it again I'm realising how utterly weird a campaign it was. People who are living with cancer (or have survived it) might look at it and think 'yes, they're right, I should be dead' and people who have lost someone might look at it and think angrily, 'yeah, why are you here and X isn't'. The concept behind it is just very confused.

I wonder whether these campaigns are conceived to tug the heartstrings of people who have never been affected by cancer so are emotionally removed. But as someone else said above, one in three of us is affected, so it is an ever-dwindling number of unaffected people. Could Mumsnet get the CEO of CRUK on here to explain him/herself?

The other thing about the "battle" metaphor that makes me angry is this: why is it assumed that it is morally better to "battle"? Couldn't you equally argue that it is better to accept gracefully that you are going to die and come to terms with it? (I'm not saying that it is morally better, just that you could make the argument.)

I've honestly never thought about the terminology of cancer before. This discussion has really opened my eyes and actually the heart wrenching campaigns seem really vile now.

I cancelled my membership to another charity (DS's condition related charity) as they kept writing me letters asking me for money. I received one during a time DS was quite unwell and it just made me cry. It tipped me over the edge and I hated them for that.

I never really considered the vocabulary used in this.
My mum had cancer, she's clear now, but she did say that she had to fight it.
If thinking she was beating it helped her, then that's fine, there's is the danger though of people with different mindsets feeling they have to, and that would be so damaging.
Putting on a brave fave for someone else is the most draining thing ever. No one needs to be made to feel they ought to do that.
Letting go should not carry the stigma it does no.

now

I think this battling metaphor does damage in another way too: my mother died of cancer. She was first diagnosed 13 years before it finally killed her. She had a good recovery but her initial cancer had spread into the lymph system. She was a medic and knew this meant the cancer would return at some point. Anyway many years later she had a metastasis that eventually killed her after being horrifically ill for a year.

She was hospitialised for the final month, various system failures due to cancer and the treatments. She was 'battling' and it was awful to watch.

Then in the last week she made peace with it, she decided that her time had come and they stopped the treatments apart from the morphine and she had a a 'good dying'. She said goodbye to the people she loved, she was ok with it. I was always grateful that she reached that point of acceptance and peace before she died. It would have been horrendous for her to die in the phase just before when she wasn't ready and was fighting it.
There is a time to fight and a time to die - you have to know which is which. I hate that this battling metaphor makes me think that maybe she should have fought in that last phase. Because I dont think it would have made any difference and it would have made her death much harder for everyone.

That's very moving Firsttimer - and very wise I think.

I just lost my darling Dad. These misconceptions offend me.

I couldn't read all the posts. Has anyone sent this thread link to CR?

i have sent this to CR and have complained, nicely!

Its angers me as my dad is right now getting some really super treatment for his cancer. and its costs alot of money, and likely would nto be avalable had some of these charities not riased money. so to see them miss the mark, really upsets me

I also am still confronted by how hard it was when one of my best friends had cancer. she got well into the "breat cancer pink gang" thing, and I found it very hard to support all the walks for life and the whole thing offended me.

of course I supported here and kept my mouth firmly shut. But I still feel a bit guilty and uncomfortable and wierd about the whole thing

I also think that there's this odd space in between. You are well again but you know someday it'll be back. I dont know how my mother lived with cancer in the 13 years in between. Two check ups a year, big celebration at the 5 years and 10 years all clear. But I know she often thought when is it going to come back. But 'battling' does describe that for me. Its just life. You get on with things, you learn to live with risk. I think human beings are tremendously adaptable - it has very little to do with being brave

Thanks for sending this to CR porca

I hope it can begin to challenge some unhelpful approaches, and change attitudes so that we can all support those with cancer, and their family and friends, better.

I meant 'battling' does not describe that for me.

This is a very interesting thread. My grandafther died of liver & lung cancer when he was 73-he wasn't an old frail 73, he was tall handsome and strong, the days leading up to his diagnosis he was still cliff walking for miles on end and sailing his boat.

I'd never even thought about it in those terms before. I have an aquaintance who is quite high up in CRUK and i think I may well post her a link about this on facebook.

One thing I have found interesting is that the idea of 'battle' is perpetuated by the doctors. Since DDs diagnosis, I was not able to ask about 'what ifs'. I'm a worrier by nature, and being in full command of the facts helps me to cope. I was repeatedly fobbed off with, 'we will deal with it when it happens'. For example, she had to go into remission at the end of first month of chemo. The doctor would not discuss what would happen if this didn't happen. I completely respect the idea that there should be a positive spin on things for my DD - she has turned 13 this year, so is fully aware of what is happening to her. However, some of us need all the information so we can be prepared. The idea of 'that isn't going to happen' is not helpful as it means it is more difficult to deal with if it does. And of course it does to people.

Another example is when I have been repeatedly told that by September DD will be well enough to be back in school, will be on maintenance chemo (for a further 18 months) but will be 'normal' and able to have a 'normal' life again. So, when we get to now and I've still been in and out of hospital with her for the past four months, and she's still struggling, and is anything but 'normal', I feel incredibly let down (not by her, by them for not telling me that it might not go according to plan). I had tried to go back to work, I had tried to resume 'normal life' for my 2 year old DS, but it has all failed miserably.

Positive slants from doctors are bollocks when you are trying to negotiate the daily life of this illness. Other parents have also said this. Like never dealing with what happens if they relapse -'it's so rare' - then their child relapses. It's hideous. I think we should be allowed to be prepared. Children die from this disease, there is no guarantee that it won't be mine.

At the end of the day, they can try to dress up a 90% survival rate as much as they like, but as soon as you are dealing with percentages and your child's life, you are in the shit and you should be allowed to be scared and to ask scary questions as it is fucking terrifying.

You are absolutely right. I don't have experience of cancer but have long found this language very uncomfortable, with its tone of 'the saved and the damned'. It makes as much sense as dotty celebs saying that earthquake victims must have had bad karma.

I suspect, though don't know, that it has emerged from American positivity and a psychological / cultural need to be 'proactive', some combination of religious belief of a particularly interventionist kind and new-agey belief in the self, and the conspiracy-theorist's desire for simplicity to overcome difficult, unpredictable complexity.

I have read a short discussion on this elsewhere, newspaper letters page maybe, where the view in favour was that 'battling' gave people a reason to get up in the morning, a focus and a determination to make the most of what they have, rather than slipping into helpless despond. I can see that but also feel uncomfortable that a singular obsession with battling might distract from a dignified process of dying and preparing oneself and others for death. Maybe that's expecting too much too - I imagine some people go for ignoring it as far as possible, doing the treatment and getting on with things.

What we need are good stats on the effectiveness of attitude in keeping people alive and in improving the quality of the time they have left - Cancer UK ought to have these, especially if they are promoting behaviour based on a premise that fighting helps. I think there is some evidence that mental attitude helps fight illness but I'd be really surprised if it's anything more than a weak effect against less powerful diseases. I'd also like to see their figures for the detrimental effects on the person and their family of reconciling themselves to not having been one of 'the winners' or 'the saved'.

I hate it I hate it I hate it

I want to write more but am in work and will burst in to tears of frustration and anger.

But it is so wrong; it takes away a person?s right to be angry, to be sad/scared/grumpy/ bitchy/angry and all the rest because they have to be brave and fight. . . .

Oh fuck off

This "battle" talk is something that has annoyed the poo out of me for years. Every time I hear it in the media, it makes me want to snarl. The idea that someone "lost their battle with cancer" is just wrong on so many fronts. I 've even heard the same language starting to be used for other diseases, such as Alzheimer's. It seems an added cruelty, in a situation which is cruel enough already.

I don't think it's only CRUK's fault. It's been commonplace for a long while. Maybe we need to start logging incidents of it on TV and radio news and in newspapers, and complaining about them too?

There's an interesting-looking book out now, which won the Pulitzer prize for non-fiction, and the author himself decries the baleful influence of the positive thinking philosophy: "I think it does a nasty disservice to patients. A woman with breast cancer already has her plate full, and you want to go and tell her that the reason you're not getting better is because you're not thinking positively? Put yourself in that woman's position and think what it feels like to be told your attitude is to blame for why you're not getting better. I think it's nasty." (See here for full interview.)

Thank you so much for this thread. A year ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer and have just finished active treatment. I was told by the main breast care nurse and the oncologist that 'those who have a positive attitude tend to do better'. I am also a natural worrier who needs facts and figures to make sense of things, and these are hard to come by. Following a serious accident four years ago I now also suffer from anxiety/panic disorder and insomnia when under stress. I have felt absolutely crucified and exhausted with fear not only about my cancer but that my 'negative' feelings are making recurrence/secondaries more likely. People have told me what an inspiration I have been throughout my treatment but mostly I think that's down to good acting and pushing feelings under the carpet. Since treatment finished I have been overwhelmed by anxiety and depression which I have not been able to hide. This thread has made me feel a bit better.

However, just this morning DS2 (8) was wondering what name his children would call me. I laughed along with him at the time but now he is at school I have been sobbing my heart out over the chances of me ever seeing any grandchildren. (firsttimer your mum's story has, I'm afraid, terrified me once more. Sorry, but here at least I hope it's ok to admit that) I had one lymph node plus vascular involvement and don't know how on earth I am going to manage living with the fear of this bastard disease coming back (or not actually having gone) or indeed of....death.

It is a complete headfuck for cancer patients to be made to feel emotionally/psychological reponsible for how their illness pans out on top of everything.

I recently stopped believing in 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' too. Personally, it would seem that what doesn't kill you can kill a part of you.

Fishandjam

It's a bit like Job's "friends" in the Bible telling him he was ill because of his sins.

• There's a long history of blaming sufferers for their afflictions.

And completely with you that saying someone "lost their battle with cancer" is wrong in so many ways.

I'm getting so cynical here and thinking it's all about trying to force people to be good patients, not ask questions, and not make a fuss (but fight bravely)

And from the cancer charities it's all about raising the profile of cancer (eg when someone dies all we say about them is that they had cancer - what about their whole other wonderful life ?) and putting forward the idea that treatment is always the best option and that we just need to find new and better treatments (so please give generously )

Please tell me I'm wrong.

I am thankful for treatments that have saved the life of my 3 year old niece. But I don't think her survival had much to do with her brave spirit - sweet little poppet though she is

I wonder if patients are told they must fight it and never stop battling to pressurise them to keep going with the chemotherapy.

A friend's dad died in the most awful circumstances in hospital - I won't go into details - but it had long been acknowledged that his cancer was undoubtedly very advanced and terminal.

It would have been much less frightening for him and his family if he had been at home, coming to terms with his own death.

Limejelly, XXXXXXXX