To hate these kind of comments about surviving cancer?

[Sallystyle]

I am pretty sure everyone by now is aware my ex husband died in December of cancer leaving three of our young children behind. I know I mention it a lot but it has been a devastating few months.

I think I have mentioned my dislike of these type of comments elsewhere as well.

I go onto FB and see a friends status about how she has been recovered from cancer for over 8 years now. That is fantastic, I have sent messages saying how happy I am for her etc but I take great offence at some of the comments which are on the lines of:

'Of course you fought it, you are strong'
'Cancer could never beat someone like you'
'Hold your head up, this just shows what an amazing strong person you are, cancer never had a chance'

So reading this hit me hard this morning and I have since hid the status in question but I am sitting here feeling really pissed off. This is not the first time I have read stuff like this.

I just want to shout and say cancer doesn't care if you are a strong person or not, dying from cancer doesn't make you any less stronger than the next person. I know no one means any offence but how hard is it to just say congratulations I am so happy for you or something?

Maybe I am just hurting and bitter but I so wanted to comment on it but I did the right thing and just hid it instead and then came straight here to vent.

So am I an unreasonable to hate these type of comments?

Yadnbu, I dont like seeing or hearing comments like that either. When dh was having chemo people were, I know trying to be helpful, saying be positive and telling him to eat this, not eat that and it cured so and so. He knew it wadnt going to end well and needed the energy to concentrate on himself and not be made to feel he was somehow failing if he didn't do this that and the other. Like I say I know its with the best of intentions but thought I'd mention it as you never know who's reading and who it might help.

It's so difficult.
Because people think they are being supportive. It's come from those wanky true life inspirational films and magazine stories. I think people say it as a reflex -as if its shorthand for 'i support you'

It pissed my dad off. My sister kept saying 'that's it. You have to keep fighting. You have to beat this'
One day he said to her 'I'm not fighting. I'm just being treated and trying to be positive. All you are doing is making me feel that if I die, if this thing kills me, I will have let you all down'

I'm sorry for your loss. I lost my dad and then my sister. Cancer sucks.

OP, YANBU and I am so sorry for your loss.

My mother died young from cancer. It wasn't because she wasn't brave or strong, it was because it was diagnosed late and the doctors weren't able to cure it.

People don't seem to talk in these terms about other diseases like pneumonia or Parkinson's or malaria or heart disease, or any of the other range of things that could get you. Surviving cancer is absolutely nothing at all to do with the character of the individual (how could it be?) and everything to do with what kind of cancer it is, how early it's discovered and what kind of medical treatment you have access to.

OP, have you ever read John Diamond's book about his cancer, C? He has a lot of contempt for this "battle" idea. I don't know if it would help to read it (perhaps it's still too raw) but you'd know that you're not the only person to feel this way.

YANBU to find it upsetting OP. I'm very sorry that you and your children have lost someone so important to you all.

Birdsgotta Is right that people just grasp for something to say- and these sort of comments are what they know, what they've learnt. As PPs have said, some of the cancer charities use this sort of language in their advertising and so it becomes part of the collective public dialogue around cancer. I think I may have used such language myself in the past, before my family was personally affected by cancer.

My dad had 4 weeks from his diagnosis to death, and by the time he was diagnosed, he was cognitively impaired (multiple brain tumours) and unable to understand that he was ill and so there was no way he could have 'fought' it. (A brain full of tiny tumours can't be treated anyway).

My mum, despite being a tiny little person, really did attempt to fight her illness. She remained relentlessly positive and brave in the face of it. If there were medals for cheerful cancer patients, she should have got one. But the bastard disease killed her anyway. Any suggestion that she 'lost' her fight makes me feel profoundly angry. She tried very bloody hard to not be ill. It was mum's second cancer, the first one having been treated successfully. Of course this gave people the green light to say 'well, she's beaten it once before, hasn't she? She'll beat this one too!' All very well-meant but unfortunately misguided. This was a completely different cancer, in a different part of the body and she was 20 years older than she'd been with the first one. Totally different set of circumstances.

Sending best wishes to all on this thread affected by cancer- those who are living with it, and those who have been bereaved by it.

I completely get how you feel and agree with you 100%.

(When I was having treatment for cancer I used to be annoyed at all the magazines in hospital with articles about women battling breast cancer cheerfully - it's usually breast cancer - and going in to their work during chemo even though they were very poorly. It felt like bragging to me.)

I would have died if my diagnosis had come a few months later - there is so much luck/bad luck involved.

YANBU OP. Statuses on Facebook such as those you describe seem to suggest that an individual can survive a disease based on something they do. I do not believe this at all.
Cancer kills athletes, Cancer kills the most stubborn of people and the people with the strongest reasons to live. There is quite often nothing more those people could have done to change the outcome.
There are also people with cancer who are not athletes, are not strong minded and who feel they do not have as much as other people to live for, possibly because they are also depressed, yet they survive.

It is not a choice to die from cancer.
Those statuses almost suggest it is.
They are wrong.

I think Race for Life was guilty of it "Hey cancer, we're coming to get you" etc. As if cancer "cares".

I second John Diamonds book, when you're ready. He put into words things I know my dh was feeling but couldnt express and also validated my feelings as the one left behind

I hate those kind of comments too. I recently lost my mum to cancer and she fought so hard to stay with us for a year after the doctors told her she'd be lucky to have two months. It makes it seem like she wasn't strong enough to beat it which I know is total rubbish. She fought as long as she could but her spirit was stronger than her body and it wasn't to be.

I think people make these comments without really thinking about how you can be the strongest person in the world but cancer doesn't care.

Not comparable, but I had a traumatic birth with DD2 and I hate seeing comments about how positive thinking etc can help to have a pain-free birth. People want to feel like they're always in control and not at the mercy of nature. It's a scary thing knowing that you have no control in some situations and this is the way people cope.

It's shitty for you to read stuff like that and I'm sorry for your loss

You are so not being unreasonable.

Trice sorry about your situation, too.

As for why people say it, I know they don't know what to say, but exhorting another person to 'be strong' 'don't let it beat you' it just completely insensitive when they are facing such a nasty disease and possibly their own limited lifespan.

The research also shows it's bollocks- the last meta-review I read said that positive thinking was not associated with longer life after cancer diagnosis, although as the very sensitive poster who is in palliative care pointed out, it may help some people with what they have to cope with. But- you can't cure cancer through thinking positive, it's just so many magnitudes of more devastating than a few nice thoughts running through your brain.

YANBU in that I agree with you. Ds2 has leukaemia and when people have said "he's strong he'll fight it" I did actually correct them - his "battle" is chemical, it's whether the little white blasts die in their billions in response to the drugs he's taking.

I take no credit that he's now in remission, save for getting him to the hospital when needed, caring for him and giving the medication as directed.

YABU in assuming anyone has really thought about it beyond that it is something people just say. It's almost a convention. It's a cliché. Clichés are lazy sometimes but people use them without thinking through the implications.

I wish you much love and kindness over the next few weeks, months and years. xxxx

you are really not being unreasonable I never understand the survive word used about serious illness, I am so sorry for you and your childrens loss

argh, I don't want to be unsupportive, but those FB comments aren't about cancer at all.

90% of what I read on MN & increasingly what I hear in RL I have to rephrase and then I realise the poster/speaker meant something quite different to what was literally written or said. This is a pain but I would take offence at everything ever uttered if I didn't.

Those aren't comments about what other people did or didn't do (whether they were strong or not). They're meant to encourage the survivor to keep their morale up. That's all they're about. So... yabu, sorry.

Yanbu, it's insensitive as well as being offensive to others that have lost loved ones.

TBF on the people who say Survive cancer have usually seen it elsewhere normally from cancer charities they use words like you can fight it or survive, strong etc ,

Just bought the John Diamond book on my kindle.

Thanks everyone and much love to everyone who has lost someone to cancer, has had cancer and those who have it.

lljk I see what you're saying (I think), and while you're right that those comments are absolutely not intended to make judgements about other peo

I agree with manicinsomniac. It's just something people say. It's up there with 'she's in a better place now', which people said about mum. She wasn't, but they mean well, there was no malice intended. I smiled and said thank you for your thoughts. Those same people would never uttered that phrase to my friend, who lost her 3 year old to cancer.

Facebook broadcasts messages to people who are not really the intended recipient. They put their own spin on it, and feelings are hurt. It's one of the downsides to social media.

You are not being unreasonable. I've never really thought about those comments, much less made any myself, but I have seen them on posts and you've made me look at them in a whole new way. People can be so insensitive, even when they don't mean to be.

I'm so sorry for your loss Sam, I can only imagine the devastation you must be feeling.

YANBU OP

I'm so sorry for your loss

I hate this stuff on Facebook, that seems to insinuate that if you're strong enough, you'll beat it. And if you don't beat it, you 'lost the fight' against cancer. Insensitive I think.

YANBU. I work with terminally ill people and I don't notice that they are 'weaker' than people who survive - they just have different cancers.

I find it really sad when families worry someone is 'giving up' or think they'll beat it 'because he/she is a fighter'. Coping strategies can really help you manage better but if you are chockfull of cancer it's painful watching people hurt themselves more having set themselves unachievable targets. Or relatives pressurizing a poorly person to 'keep fighting'.

Most of my colleagues (even those in the curative end) feel the same about the whole 'battle against cancer' narrative.

My Dad died of cancer. He was brave and strong and amazing. Part of his bravery was knowing when he'd had enough. People die, it's the way the world works, and it's offensive to suggest that if you tried a bit harder, you wouldn't have.

Yanbu at all, my brother died of cancer aged 16 nearly 8 years ago now and he fought it bravely & courageously everyday, just because it took him doesn't take away the above.

My sympathies op xx

I hate these comments.

Children die from cancer. They are not weak.
My grandfather was felled in three months. I have yet to meet anybody who loved life as much as him, who was as happy as him and he was also a lifelong vegetarian cyclist. I will never stop missing him.

Please STOP leaving comments like this if any of you do. They make people seethe.

Samu. You talk about it on here as much as you like.

...people's experience with cancer, unfortunately, those comments can be interpreted a different way- regardless of the intention of the speaker.