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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU in Saying Cancer isn't a Battle That You Win or Lose

270 replies

NicePieceOfPlaid · 04/10/2018 08:23

I heard this morning that the mother of a young friend died over night. She'd had cancer for a while but had not responded to treatment.

Friend has posted a brief message on facebook to let friends know. Among the first messages is one saying that the person is sorry she lost her battle. Cancer isn't a fight or a battle. You can't buy a gun and shoot it.

Sometimes the treatment works and sometimes it doesn't. I had cancer and so far the treatment has worked for me. If it comes back I'm not going to blame myself for not fighting hard enough.

It's down to luck. If you die from cancer it wasn't because you were too weak to fight it. It really gives me the rage when it's talked of as a battle. I no longer give to charities who address it in that way.

Why make terminally ill people feel even worse by implying they haven't fought hard enough?

OP posts:
Original poster
NicePieceOfPlaid · 05/10/2018 07:03

Thanks to everyone who has told their stories, whether or not they agree with me. It seems to me that enough of us feel this way for cancer charities to look again at their slogans and the impact they have on those with cancer and their families.

The nature of my volunteer work meant I had to be more public about my cancer than I would have liked from diagnosis. I had tremendous support from those I worked with as well as family and friends. But I never knew how to respond to someone who said something like, "You can beat this, fight it all the way. You're a strong woman, you've got this etc."

OP posts:
ocelot41 · 05/10/2018 07:05

YANBU, I hate this too

stopfuckingshoutingatme · 05/10/2018 07:09

This comes up a lot

Cáncer marketing is fucking awful . I mean I obviously approve of the money they raise but the language is vile sometimes

And how they anthromorphatise it . It’s just an illness at the end of the day .

But like Brexit it clearly appeals to a majority so I have to let it slide

Tahitiitsamagicalplace · 05/10/2018 07:22

Yanbu.
Words like battle, survivor, win, "you're a fighter" etc I find quite patronising and insulting to my intelligence a bit. I don't do anything to try and "win" anything. Except show up and allow whatever scary tests, surgery or drugs the doctors think will help. I'm really early in my "journey" (there's another one! Grin) though so maybe I'll change my mind when I feel properly ill.

All the words mentioned above though, are just part of the whole "feeling sorry for someone" and being sad thing, so I don't think anyone is intentionally trying to be annoying or offensive. They just haven't given it a deeper level of thought maybe.

Delatron · 05/10/2018 07:24

How on earth do you kick cancer in the nuts?

How do you fight something when you have no idea why it developed? Cancer is cells gone wrong. 30% of cancers are lifestyle related, 10% are genetic. So 60% we have no idea!

Most people with cancer hate this terminology yet people keep persisting with it!!

AnguaResurgam · 05/10/2018 07:29

I think the phrase is significantly less popular with those who actually have cancer. That is enough for me to avoid it, unless/until I am talking to someone with cancer who had indicated that they find it helpful.

Anything else would be putting phrase ahead of the feelings of many people at a time when they would disproportionately benefit from a bit of consideration.

Terribletwos84 · 05/10/2018 07:40

I agree with you op. I lost my mum nearly two years ago to cancer, diagnosed in the August and given two months, but lasted four. While she found the fighting it metaphor helpful at first she struggled at the end feeling like she was giving up on it and i remember telling her that she wasn't letting herself be beaten and she had nothing to be ashamed about. And it didnt help me when people said about her losing her battle with it, it made me feel like there maybe should have been something that could be done when it reality there was nothing. I think really it's a phrase you have to be so careful about in case it does cause offence when people are feeling very sensitive and vulnerable.

Buggerbrexit · 05/10/2018 08:21

Macmillan don’t use battle imagery - the nearest they’ll come is “fight” which isn’t too heavy on battle connotations.

I stopped donating to CRUK in 2013 after their donation upgrade phone calls and a particularly misjudged campaign about one of their consultants not having to worry his children would die from cancer.

BehemothPullsThePeasantsPlough · 05/10/2018 08:26

I think that the intention behind the various combative charity slogans “stand up to cancer” “cancer we’re coming to get you” is entirely reasonable. The “we” means donor, researchers, medics, public health bodies, governments. We as a species are fighting a war on cancer as an illness and we’re actually doing very well on many but not all fronts.

The problem is that the terminology overlaps with the narrative of individual battle that’s common in popular discourse and which so many people with cancer and their relatives find hurtful and offensive. So those campaigns which I think are unexceptionable when considered in their own right are tainted with the connotations of the Facebook post the OP was abjectinf to.

TwitterQueen1 · 05/10/2018 10:19

MaryPoppins I'm going to ask you nicely, one final time, to STOP FUCKING PATRONISING ME. I don't need to 'see' things the way you do at all, ever. My opinion is equally as valid as yours ( more so if you're not a cancer patient), and you have no right to tell me that how I feel is wrong.

YeTalkShiteHen · 05/10/2018 10:22

TwitterQueen1 well said! I’ll take my lead on how things should be phrased about cancer from the people who have cancer. Because their opinion matters more than mine.

As an autistic woman I have little patience with NT people telling me what I should and shouldn’t say about being autistic, so I think this is the same sort of idea.

thereallifesaffy · 05/10/2018 10:49

YANBU but I think some of us set great store on semantics. I do. But you have to accept that others don't. Fortunately those in the medical profession wouldn't use such a phrase.

MaryPoppinsPenguins · 05/10/2018 11:14

TwitterQueen - honestly? Or what? Hmm I wasn’t even talking to you, I was just replying on the thread. I’m as welcome to my opinion as anyone else. I’ve lost people to cancer, I work in cancer, I like many have been affected by cancer. No one is patronising you. It’s a discussion.

iVampire · 05/10/2018 11:16

Have you read TwitterQueen’s threads about her cancer, YeTalkShiteHen ? You might not be so quick to dismiss her views when you have

JustDanceAddict · 05/10/2018 11:18

I hate it too. My mum died from cancer, it was very quick, diagnosed too late.,

Delatron · 05/10/2018 11:25

Just heard on the radio ‘we laugh in the face of cancer’

We don’t really though do we? I appreciate the research and advancements in some areas. But still 50% of us will suffer from this terrible disease.

YeTalkShiteHen · 05/10/2018 11:27

iVampire I wasn’t dismissing her, in fact quite the opposite. RTFT, because I’m actually annoyed you’ve said that when I absolutely have not dismissed her at all.

YeTalkShiteHen · 05/10/2018 11:30

I’m as welcome to my opinion as anyone else.

It takes a special level of arrogance to tell someone who has cancer, repeatedly, that you have more right to be heard than they do.

EmilyRosiEl · 05/10/2018 11:33

I've thought this lots of times too!

I guess some people do like to refer to themselves as survivors because they have gone through physical and psychological trauma and it takes enormous strength to do that so that sort of makes sense BUT I really hate 'lost their battle' type language- it's not to do with the strength of the person in any way.

In fact maybe seeing cancer as the opposition in battle is even an unhelpful way of characterizing cancer because it is someone's own cells going a bit wonky.

MaryPoppinsPenguins · 05/10/2018 11:33

YeTalkShite - that’s not what it says. It doesn’t dismiss anyone else’s, quote the opposite. It says Everyone Is Entitled To Thier Opinion

YeTalkShiteHen · 05/10/2018 11:36

MaryPoppinsPenguins you have repeatedly harangued TwitterQueen with a tone of superiority and dismissed what she is saying.

Ihaventgottimeforthis · 05/10/2018 11:40

I totally agree with you OP.
Why is it only cancer that attracts this type of language, instead of heart disease or sepsis or anything like that.
My friends & family have been very badly affected by cancer., and yes the implication is that if people were only 'stronger' or 'more positive' or 'kicked cancer's ass' that really drives me mad then they wouldn't have died.

puffyisgood · 05/10/2018 11:40

I don't at all mind the use of 'battle' to refer to someone who's really making the most of life whilst ill or under treatment or whatever, I think it's quite appropriate.

I say that has someone whose father passed away earlier this year who was killed by an inoperable, very quick-spreading & chaemo-resistant type of glioblastoma - no amount of 'fighting' could do anything to stop the cancer cells multiplying, with inevitable results. But, no I'm not really offended at all when i hear the phrase being bandied around.

Ski4130 · 05/10/2018 11:41

I agree with you op, I hate the inference that by dying you’ve lost, or didn’t fight hard enough. I lost my step father to cancer, and someone at his funeral told me that ‘he couldn’t fight anymore, and gave in’!! I don’t know how that was meant to be comforting, and it was wrong too, he’d fought to the end, and never gave up, but his body did.

MaryPoppinsPenguins · 05/10/2018 11:41

I’m not sure you understand what harangued means. And again, I’m as welcome to have an opinion as anyone else. Not everyone can agree... you clearly take issue with what I’ve said and that’s fine. But I know a lot of people who work extremely hard to beat cancer, and I don’t think any of those people would consider for a second that someone who ‘lost their battle’ etc hadn’t fought hard enough. There’s no malice intended... and I’m allowed to have that view, just as you’re allowed yours.