AIBU to feel really strongly about the new Cancer Research UK ad

[Gattasyl]

I keep hearing it on the radio and it's really starting to annoy the c*ap out of me. I think to keep putting the emphasis on cancer as a battle, as something you can win if you fight hard enough is just unfair and untrue and to be honest misleading.
This new one says 'so and so is a cancer fighter by night' because she's running the marathon...' I don't know... I find it really offensive towards people who have not 'beaten' the disease! AIBU??

Slightly OT but expat I have been wracking my brain to remember your user name, I remember Aillidh's story so well and I wanted to thank you for your very candid posting about her diagnosis and treatment. My little boy was diagnosed with leukaemia a couple of months ago and it is in part due to your posts that I realised that the symptoms I saw developing almost in front of my eyes over the course of just a few days could be (and indeed were) signs of something much more sinister than an active toddler with a tendency to bruise a little more easily than his twin brother. I am so sorry that you lost your beautiful daughter, as I am only at the beginning of this hideous journey I cannot even begin to imagine what you have been through. I am however, incredibly grateful for the awareness you raise with your posts which helped me get my baby into hospital far faster than I otherwise might have done.

huge amounts of respect/ sympathy to all the people going through this pain.

This reminds me of blogs/ articles by Kate Granger e.g. www.theguardian.com/society/2014/apr/25/having-cancer-not-fight-or-battle

To the person up thread who asked about emailing this thread to cancer research uk, my fiance sent an email to them 6 months ago about this issue and received no response whatsoever....

I often called cancer a bastard.

It helped me and my kids to get angry. I needed to be angry and well, cancer is a disease, it doesn't have a mind of its own, but talking about it like it was this thing that set out to harm him made me have an easier focus for my anger, if that makes sense.

I don't do it now but it did help for a while. I have overheard my teen shout at the TV adverts saying 'you bastard thing, you took my dad' and of course it isn't a bastard but again, it helps him.

I am sure that is as equally offensive to others as the battle crap is to me, so I would not use talk like that to others.

I am currently having cancer investigations and briefly I do get moments when I forget but am only too quickly reminded.
I know the charity mean well and I support it and admire how far they have come with medical advances but I am just so sick of having it rammed in my face. In the shops its all pink race for life merchandise, its on the labels of my food in the cupboard, chuggers on the street, people knocking on my door,its on the TV and its on the radio. I want a day when I don't have to be reminded about it in the brief and few cancer stress and worry free moments I do have.

Twirlywirly,
I've often thought it must be hell on people who have cancer, or are being investigated for cancer, to have those ads on telly umpteen times a day.
To be reminded about it all the time!

Oh, Bicycle, I wish your son and your family all the best! Yes, my daughter's symptom was a bruise that didn't go away and got worse very rapidly. Here is a photo of it, in November, 2011. Unexplained bruising.

She had not ALL, but AML, and within that a mutation of FLT3 and translocation 6,9, for former of which was the most lethal and did not remit after induction round, despite morphological remission.

But unexplained bruising, bruises that don't go away, are all something that needs to be checked out.

Sending you and your boy love and wishing you all the best.

I have cancer and I hate this too. I also hate the whole positivity ethos. You'd never tell someone to stay positive to ward off their diabetes because it's patently bollocks, so why does everyone believe this shit with cancer?!

She died 7 months and 29 days following diagnosis.

So sorry to hear about your lovely daughter, expat. Condolences and best wishes to all.
I've had breast cancer and every time those bastarding ads come I switch the sound off. How the hell can babies 'fight' cancer. It's just shite.

I'm a cancer survivor, and in the last three years I've lost several very close relations and friends to this illness. I loathe these adverts with a passion. I will not give money to CRUK, and actively avoid RFL (the whole women only thing with that is a whole other issue!) and never sponsor participants.

When I had cancer, I attended Grove House, the wonderful hospice in St. Albans. While I was there, not one member of staff or volunteer ever used this sort of language, nor did any of the other medical professionals I had dealings with. Ten years on, I am still immensely grateful for the help and support I received there, in particular the amazing help in dealing with my own emotions/feelings and trying to make sense of them.

The adverts are massively intrusive and one of the reasons why I have a Sky box so in general we FF through ad breaks, so I don't have to see them.

The original bruise is where you see yellow. She was dyspraxic and took that bruise at a new play park that opened up after Halloween. And it just went like that in so little time.

We took her to the GP on Tuesday and thankfully, unlike so many who are fobbed off, he was serious. But her on ABs and made an appointment for the Thursday morning first thing. Saw it then, increased the dose and booked us in for Friday morning.

And then sent us to the children's hospital. She was diagnosed that evening.

If that had not happened, given our rural area, she stood a good chance of dying of sepsis over the weekend, her immune system decimated from leukaemia.

That GP has retired, but he had seen several cases of leukaemia in his decades of practice and had rung haemo at the children's hospital ahead of us.

Leukaemia kills very quickly.

YANBU. I find the adverts offensive and ignorant.

expat

My brother had Lymphoma last year. His life was on pause, he lived through the treatment, it had its obvious impact on his family life, but he's fine now. It wasn't a battle, but a feat of endurance. His hair still isn't the same, but he doesn't miss the chemo tiredness, sickness, or lack of social life.

My Dad has testicular cancer. Again, he has to get into a new routine, living with a long term chronic illness that, in his case, won't get better. He's on testosterone injections, and an experimental drug, but it only keeps the cancer at bay, it doesn't cure him. Initially he's been given 3 years, maybe longer, but at some point his treatment will stop working. In the meantime, he is taking more exercise, eating better, and looking after himself. It's a test of faith, of endurance, of re-acquaintance with family forgotten, of arranging wills and estate, of seeing as much of the world as he can before it gets too much. It's making sure life will be okay for Mum after he's gone. It's a c* of an illness, that no benevolent God could have thought was a zippy idea.

I donate to CRUK and may stop because of this campaign. I'll donate to my Dad's hospital, the same one that treated my brother, instead.

My DHs mum passed away in 1973. Breast cancer She was 46 DH told me she was one of the first women in the country to undergo then pioneering reconstruction surgery.
We have photos of her She looked like a cross between Natalie Wood and Rita Hayworth. Very kind hearted DH tells me.

The ads piss him off too and i understand why.

I think there is a cultural problem with the way illness is viewed in this country. You are seen as being weak or a shirker if you are ill Look at the way newspapers cover people on sickness benefits. Its like a subtle drip drip If you are ill you are ill. Survival depends on lots of things On how quickly the cancer is caught, what drugs are available , what research has been done what drugs have been tested.

There are too many other factors at work Not only is it an insult to call it a battle....its also too bloody simplistic.

expat Im on my third username now and remember your posts well My best to you always

to Expat and everyone else who has lost a loved one to cancer.

I nearly swung for a woman in my office when she told me that the reason my DH had contracted cancer was because of 'too much negativity in his life'. It's messed up thinking like this, and the labelling of cancer as a battle to be fought that implies it's somehow your fault if you succumb to cancer or worse, die of it.

I get told now, some 20 years on, that DH survived his life-threatening cancer because 'he must be a fighter'. No, by sheer coincidence and luck he was fortunate enough to live in London, be given dial up internet access at home by his employers and nosy enough to google his condition and discover that trials of an experimental drug were going on at Barts, which he was then deeply fortunate to be allowed to take part in. Otherwise I'd be a widow and we would never have had DD. And I'd have to live with the shitty message that DH hadn't fought hard enough to live.

No thanks.

Yanbu I've had cancer and survived only because of having a treatable one and luck. I certainly didn't do anything that anyone else wouldn't do. People at work meant well and told me 'I was their inspiration' but privately I kind of laughed and said to myself 'well what are my options, not take treatment and croak?'

I'm sort of superstitious and would never say I battled it and won. The minute I'd say that I'd worry they would find I had gone out of remission. Or they would find a new one.

Sorry just read my post and I hope it wasn't offensive. What I really meant was that I just did what anyone else would have done and was lucky it worked.

YANBU. I think this ridiculous narrative about fighting battles, winning and losing really needs to be re-thought.

It also demeans all those 'fighting' other diseases that have no cure. MND, MS, things that are just as nasty but with no chance of 'winning'.

Expat xxxxx

YANBU. Does anyone know a better cancer charity that I can donate to?

Ideally they would not run offensive ads, not use chugger and spend money on research into rarer cancers.

I assume that pharmaceutical companies research the more common cancers as there is a bigger market for treatments.

Expat, I am so sorry for your loss.

I also hate the sweeping generalisation that cancer is just one disease that comes with slogans like 'cancer, we're coming for you' etc. As has been mentioned here, there are so many types of cancer that receive unequal funding and it is offensive that they refer to it as all one disease and implying funding is going into research on all types.

I agree also with pps who have mentioned the fact that only cancers are advertised using this terminology as though other chronic illnesses aren't as important. My dm was on chemotherapy for Crohn's disease, lost her hair, lots of weight, spent lots of time in hospital etc. She's over that now, it could come back due to the nature of the disease, but you don't see anyone calling her a fighter.

My husband died 18 years ago from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) 3 weeks after diagnosis leaving me with a 6 year old and a 16 month old. I also despise the battle/fight words. I find it completely disrespectful.

What I also hated during his treatment and after as a young widow struggling to keep going with 2 small children was people constantly telling me I was so brave...I was quite vocal and usually asked them would they prefer I went to pieces and curled up and died?.