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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think Cancer Research should rethink some of their marketing?

381 replies

MrsCarriePooter · 05/12/2011 12:13

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.

OP posts:
madwomanintheattic · 05/12/2011 16:11

three years ago i asked my social research tutor whether there had been any studies into the language used around cancer (we were looking at health and illness and it seemed that the war/ battle stuff wasn't so prevalent in other countries, just the uk) and wondered how the language had developed over time. haven't found any yet, but agree that it is unhelpful and inappropriate, but has become completely steeped in our culture. you don't discuss cancer with anyone, or read about it, without the terminology coming up.

i'm just so glad people are starting to question this. thank you for the thread.

sending support and healing to you all x

Ihavewelliesbutitssunny · 05/12/2011 16:11

I recently read 'So much for that' by Lional Shriver which touches on this topic and is an interesting (but not neccessarily easy reading) account of someone dying of cancer.

ledkr · 05/12/2011 16:12

I agree too op,i had breast cancer at 27 and a double mastectomy,i was terrified and certainly didnt "fight it" more likely drowned in fear and dread. However i have to say that i firmly believe i wouldnt have surviced had i not been a scared but feisty woman.

I went private for £70 when told due to my age would not be seen for 6 weeks.

I researched suitable consultants who specialised in pre menopausal women.

I asked for chemo despite my local hospital saying i didnt need it. I found out that the Marsden were giving it to all women with my type of disease.

I had a preventative mastectomy as my risk factors were very high,but had to ask for this too.

I just dont want people to confuse "not fighting" with "not taking control of your own health care"

As an aside. I once wrote to Cosmo as they ran a "famous women touched by breast cancer" article.
Not one of them had had it.
They had experienced themselves or friends with benign lumps or had a family history of it. Hardly the same in my opinion. I was very annoyed.

suzikettles · 05/12/2011 16:12

YANBU. I remember my mum absolutely breaking down when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Partly fear, partly not wanting to leave her husband, children & grandchildren, but partly because she was scared she wouldn't be strong enough or brave enough or fight enough. As if it would be her fault if she died.

And the endless people who said "Oh your mum will be fine. She's a fighter. She won't let it beat her".

Thankfully she's still here four years later, has put it behind her as much as you can (until the next scan). But that was down to good treatment, and tumours that were (hopefully) removed, and (hopefully) hadn't spread, and (hopefully) responded to chemo and radiotherapy.

The fighting talk was a pressure though that tbh she could have done without.

Whelk · 05/12/2011 16:15

thank goodness someone else has said it. I have long thought it.

When you have cancer you are a cancer PATIENT not a cancer fighter.
The rhetoric of 'fighting', battling and ot letting it get the better of you' is not applied to other illnesses.

It simply adds pressure to what is an already appalling situation to find yourself in.

DazzleII · 05/12/2011 16:15

The Lionel Shriver book is about someone with mesothelioma. That's a cancer caused by asbestos, so there's no issue of having an otherwise healthy lifestyle or positive mental attitude. If you're exposed, you're exposed.

MummyDoIt · 05/12/2011 16:18

Absolutely agree, OP. I watched my father die of oesophageal cancer and ten months later my DH died of the same cancer. They both fought it every step of the way but they had the bad luck to get one of the less treatable cancers.

I have another problem with the insensitivity of Cancer Research. I've done the Race for Life twice, the second time just a few months after my DH died. Instead of a two minute silence before the start as there had been the previous time, there was a two minute 'celebration' where we were supposed to clap and cheer for all the people who had beaten cancer. I was not the only there with a sign on my back, saying I was running in memory of someone who died, and I thought it was unbelievably insensitive. I have refused to run Race for Life since.

SweetestThing · 05/12/2011 16:19

" I just don't want people to confuse "not fighting" with "not taking control of your own health care" - absolutely right, ledkr.

I am girding my loins for Friday's meeting with my consultant where I shall be pushing for a PET CT scan to confirm that I am in remission - not standard in the NICE guidelines, but the only way I (and they) can be sure that they've got rid of all the cancer. I also requested to have my r/t at the Marsden, not Guildford (twice the distance from our home!) and always prepare a list of questions before meeting the HCPs.

I think one of the difficulties, certainly for me, is that when you get a cancer dx, you lose control over so much of your life - everything is planned around medical appointments, treatment times etc. That's hard, to feel you have lost autonomy over so much.

SylviaBells · 05/12/2011 16:20

Oh I couldn't agree more with this thread.

I have a friend who has fairly recently been diagnosed with cancer and she is (quite rightly and perfectly understandably) absolutely bloody terrified and very down. I'd think she was crazy if she wasn't. At the moment we are all just praying her chemo will just do the 'beating' of the cancer for her so she can carry on being the wonderful friend and mother she always has been.
The implication that anyone would just let cancer beat them is offensive at best.

I watched my strong, healthy uncle reduced to a shadow of himself before he died, he had everything to live for, he wanted to live, it is obscene to suggest he had any choice in what happened to him.

Anyway, I could rant on for ages about this but everything I want to say has been said (more eloquently) by other.

Cancer Research, you should be ashamed of yourselves Angry

Ihavewelliesbutitssunny · 05/12/2011 16:21

Thats correct Dazzler but once the character finds out she has cancer and starts treatment the issue of 'battling' it and being a 'fighter' are raised and are relevant.

TroublesomeEx · 05/12/2011 16:22

Wow Mummy that's awful! Just awful.

JugglingWithGoldandMyrhh · 05/12/2011 16:27

YANBU

I'm fit and healthy ATM (not had cancer)
But I will come back to haunt you all if the last thing anybody says about me is that " she lost her battle with cancer " Aarghh !

Play "I will survive" at my funeral and a few other good tunes, have a good dance, & show a few pics of me with my DDCs or me as a little 'un and I'll be a lot happier

( smiling down on you all ! )

levantine · 05/12/2011 16:29

Mummydoit, how awful

MissBetsyTrotwood · 05/12/2011 16:37

My mum was the most negative person I met during her treatment. She felt the illness had her and her number was up right from the start. She survived and many more 'positive' people who told her to 'fight' did not. Sad

My dad 'fought' his and was convinced he was 'winning'. He was wrong.

ledkr · 05/12/2011 16:42

sweetestThing I felt the same.I once asked the Dr if id ever fall down drunk again cos i didnt want to become "sick" and be at the hospital all the time. I wanted to do normal things.
I found it easier once id said to myself Well it could come back but then anyone could get cancer too,no guarantees for anyone.
Life does return to normal especially once you arent having treatment or having lots of appointments,in many ways thats the scariest time for many people.I hardly think about it anymore unless something reminds me and think about it all as if it were someone else.
Sorry for hijack,pm me if you need support xx

ledkr · 05/12/2011 16:43

Oh btw,i did fall down drunk again-several times Grin

SingingSands · 05/12/2011 16:44

I'm so glad to have found a bunch of people who think the same as I do on this topic.

DH's grandmother died from cancer and is buried under the inscription "in memory of Xxx beloved mother and grandmother, she fought so hard until the end". I've always hated it and felt it defined her as a loser, as someone who didn't win her "fight". I feel it does her a disservice, and would have rather had a description of a warm loving family woman instead. The language we use around cancer is all wrong, it makes me sad.

ledkr · 05/12/2011 16:44

mumydoitall Race for life leaves a bad taste in my mouth too but i can never explain why.

HappyCamel · 05/12/2011 16:45

YANBU

SweetestThing · 05/12/2011 16:52

Oh, and OP - YADNBU!

(don't think I actually said that!)

TroublesomeEx · 05/12/2011 16:53

Did the "battle against cancer" discourse emerge because it used to be seen as a death sentence and now it isn't always and it was a way of telling patients it didn't necessarily mean your time was up?

I don't think it matters so much using the language of war to talk about cancer, because it is a harsh and aggressive disease and it does take personal strength to put yourself through chemo, if that is appropriate and what you choose to do, because it makes you feel so ill. But it also takes huge strength to not take the treatment if that is what is best for you.

It is a problem that if/when you die of cancer the language implies that you lost, that you were weak, that it beat you, that you weren't strong enough to stop it, that you let it.

Cancer Research should be at the forefront of changing/challenging attitudes towards cancer. Not perpetuating negative ones.

Hardgoing · 05/12/2011 16:59

madwomanintheattic, I am quite surprised that your social science teacher hasn't heard of Susan Sontag's classic 'Illness and its metaphors' which was the first to point out the victim-blaming aspect of much talk about cancer. It was written in 1978 and the language has got more florid.

hester · 05/12/2011 17:01

I agree with OP and all the other posters on this thread.

RillaBlythe · 05/12/2011 17:06

Madwomanintheattic, try looking up Emily Martin. I am on phone so can't search right now. She's an academic in Baltimore who has written on this, just an article I think. I'll try to find it later.

limitedperiodonly · 05/12/2011 17:07

hackmum I'm even less impressed by Decca Aitkenhead's standard of reporting now I know she has experienced the loss of someone to cancer.

Most people, especially those who would want to read an interview with an oncologist in the Guardian, would not believe offensive tosh about positive mental attitudes 'curing' cancer.

I'm as bemused as he seemed to be that she considered that her readers needed to have such myths debunked for them.