To hate the rhetoric surrounding cancer

[beewritesx]

My dad passed away last night so slightly emotional post ...

I really can't stand the rhetoric surrounding cancer. Whilst I know that anybody with this awful disease has a fight on their hands, I personally can't stand it when tabloids post that X "lost their battle to their cancer". No, they didn't. Their treatment stopped working. That's it!

My Dad was convinced he could "beat it". He put everything on hold because he thought he had a fighting chance. Realistically, he was in his sixties and smoked and drank all his life (in other words: his health wasn't great!). However, at the start of his diagnosis, he talked about going back to work as soon as he finished chemo and received the 'all clear'. He refused a mobility chair and didn't want visitors until he felt better. He was working on a novel he never had a chance to finish and his website has been taken down because he was too sick to update it. He also couldn't spend any time with his grandson because he was always too ill.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have had chemo. I just wish people hadn't given him all this false hope! 😥

I hate the 'battling' language too.

BUT. Your father chose to deal with his diagnosis in the best way for him. He wanted to throw everything at it and give himself the best chance. Psychologically that was how he coped. I don't think it's the rhetoric that had anything to do with it. He wanted to live, and if he hadn't had those treatments, he'd likely have struggled to deal with his illness.
Someone else might choose a different approach, but that would be because it's their way of dealing with it.

My husband didn't talk of battling or beating it. He was a quiet and calm man who didn't go in for that sort of talk. He didn't really want to talk about his illness at all. But he wanted his doctors to do everything they could to buy him as much time as possible. That was how he coped.

So sorry for the loss of your dad.

I have cancer. Six weeks after having major surgery I met with my oncologist to discuss chemotherapy. I was a bit teary in the appointment and the oncologist wanted to refer me for counselling.

@shrodingersbiscuit I complete agree with you. I said to my DH afterwards that my emotions were normal and it was ok for me to be upset. I was hardly likely to be all cheerful and jolly - there would be something wrong with me if I was. Having cancer is scary. I don't need antidepressants.

@SudokuWillNotSaveYou the concept of a journey rather than a fight is a better analogy for cancer patients. Like other posters have said, I just turn up for treatment and things are done to me. I hope I am one of the lucky ones who gets through the treatment and stays in remission for as long as possible, but who knows.

I'm so sorry for your loss OP to you and all on the thread who have lost a loved one and are coping with grief.

Look after yourselves and I agree about the rhetoric, it's absurd and sometimes upsetting. I hated seeing stupid Macmillan adverts and journalists trotting out the low survival rates for the cancer my mum had, usually while I was sat with her. I saw her freeze so many times, it made me furious and so very sad for her.

People should be more sensitive and thoughtful talking about an illness that affects so many.

@YouTubeAddict

My dad died yesterday, also of cancer 😢 I agree with everything *@beewritesx*

my heart goes out to you, and everyone else hit by this disease xxx

I agree OP.

I felt pretty bad after my husband died that he'd endured so much treatment, and the end result was pretty much the same. I think we lacked the courage to say nope, that's not how we want to spend the last couple of years, because we were strongly encouraged by both the oncology/surgery team and pretty much everyone else to intervene. Unfortunately I don't think it made much difference, and the quality of life was just so awful. I don't have a crystal ball to know if things would have been different, but I know they were a bit easier once we actually threw in the towel with treatment, accepted the end and the hospice were fantastic. I can't say for sure though if things would have been better without the endless radio/chemo, and I think I would have felt endlessly guilty for not 'fighting' and 'doing something' (and others pressured us to take action) even though actually much of it was fairly futile.

I definitely agree - a friend's mum had terminal cancer, and her levels of something (I forget what) had fallen such that chemo was stopped. She asked if they rose again, would chemo be restarted, and was told yes. So she spent much of her last few weeks refusing to see family and friends as they could be an infection risk (this was pre-covid) in an attempt to stay as healthy as possible with the aim of restarting chemo. The reality was that there was nothing that would have cured her at this point, and her family would certainly have benefitted if she'd understood that. But she was 'battling' and didn't fully understand that nothing she did would prevent the inevitable.

I lost my brother to this evil bastard disease last year. He was 35 and had a 3 year old son 😢 He had a very aggressive cancer which took over his entire body very quickly and he had no chance of fighting it. In fact, the more it took over him, the more he just wanted it to hurry up and finish him off. He was in so much pain we still had the district nurses coming to top up his syringe drivers (yes, plural) right up to about an hour before he died. Having endured everything he did, in my eyes, my brother is the bravest person I’ve ever met and no one will ever change that. But, I learned an awful lot about cancer during his illness. A lot of it was about what to say. Most people come out with those cliches because they dont know what else to say.

We will always be mindful of how we speak of his illness to his son. We will never let him think that Daddy wasn’t brave enough to stay alive to watch him grow up. But we will make sure he knows how much Daddy loved him and how hard he tried.

I’m so sorry for your loss OP. This disease is truly, truly vile

I think that if it is helpful to the person themselves to describe their experience as a battle or a struggle, as it was for Araminta, that's one thing

The problem is that the prevailing rhetoric about war and struggles and battles is so dominant in the press, on adverts and in general in society that there is no room for other experiences. That is really bad for
people facing serious illness and death who just need to have people listen to and accept their reality.

My mum died of cancer just over a year ago after what might have lazily been described as 'a long battle' but that is not a metaphor she would ever have used herself. She was accepted from day 1 of her stage 4 diagnosis that she would die of this illness and every day was a bonus to her to be made the very most of from then on (within what she could manage). She accepted treatments that she found helpful but she never expected to win this 'battle' she knew it was a losing game from the off and she just weighed up what helped her quality of life and what didn't without the pressure of trying to beat something that was in the end inevitable.

Sometimes people did put pressure on her to 'fight harder' and tried to press special diets and acupuncture or research trials or god knows what to supposedly cure her and my parents found that quite upsetting to deal with. Some people seemed to find it almost offensive that she had accepted her mortality but I thought it was sensible, graceful and very much at one with her values in life.

I hate the "I will fight and win bollocks" dad 68 led a bad life smoked drank and ate too much. To me his battle was fucking pointless. He was fighting the inevitable.

However as I nursed him in his last few days it turns out he was OK with death. He accepted the life he led his only regret was leaving his wife, children and grandchildren. He didn't want us to miss him thats why he had hope. He did it for us. He said you have to hope even when you know it won't work. It's all you have.
He died anyway but he gave his all till the end.

I'm so sorry for your loss. I also agree with the 'war' terminology surrounding terminal illness. I think it's very negative and infers 'you lost'. I know my late DW certainly refused to be defined by her illness and disliked 'battle', 'fighting'.. etc.

@twointhemorning While I completely agree re: it being normal to be scared, I think maybe there’s two things to think about:

• Some people reach the point where being scared is stealing what joy they have left and if antidepressants can help make that fear a little bit lesser, I can understand it. I worked in hospice and we had patients on antidepressants. And that’s a VERY normal time to be bloody sad about things! But some of them just didn’t want to feel sad as much as they were, and it was a tool that helped. I completely understand that it’s not the right tool for a lot of others.
• On the other hand, I would encourage almost everyone who has cancer to maybe try counseling once. Not because you’re feeling anything abnormal or you “need” help, but because it’s a safe place to say literally anything. It’s a place where you don’t have to worry about your partner’s feelings (I had a lot of patients when I worked in non-hospice cancer care, who needed to get out their feelings about things like death, and the possibility of death, and their partners thought saying, “don’t think about that,” or “that won’t be you,” was being supportive, but the patient NEEDED to talk through the worst case scenario even just once, and a counselor can be good for that). I just think counseling is really just another tool in the toolbox that every cancer patient should have available for dealing with cancer.

I really wish you the best of luck with your healing from cancer. I know it all feels like luck and such a crapshoot. And it is. All you can really do sometimes is just take care of yourself the best way you know how.

A journey would definitely be a better analogy. I think my mum would have said it was a journey. There were many many ups and downs along the way and she did benefit a huge amount from certain treatments like the antibody injections that really helped her pain from bone mets but it was always going to end up in the same place and it was about navigating that as best as she could for her.

The race for life adverts I have to switch off with stuff about 'kicking cancers butt' That just seems silly to me. I can't relate to it at all. I am happy to raise money for cancer charities for research and for support but I don't think I am somehow 'kicking butt' by doing that. I mean Shelter are not talking about 'kicking homelessness' butt' are they??

Another comment is "how do you cope?" and "I couldn't do it".

Whether you're the patient, relative or just going through something very hard, you cope because you have to and there is no alternative. People used to ask us this soon after our triplets were born. It was brutal and with no family help was unbelievably taxing, but we hoped because we had to. People going through cancer, the pain and the worry, the relatives and loved ones, they cope with it as best they can because they have to.

My mum survived her cancer but the whole talk around fighting a battle, being brave, etc really affected her during treatment. She endured really harsh chemo and she had a bad reaction to it too. She felt like a failure. She would see the ads on TV about this stuff and she'd start crying. And then pile on the randomers who told her "it's all in the mind, I know such and such had stage 4 but kept positive and beat it through sheer will" would really upset her....she felt she had to be happy and active during chemo when in reality the treatment is so awful and different for everyone....it's just fucking bollocks. Completely agree with you.

Completely agree with all the previous posters, I lost my mum to breast cancer at 56 after 6 1/2 years of treatment and we lost my brother to a brain tumour at 15. My mother did 'battle' but realistically it had spread to her lymph nodes by diagnosis so it was only a matter of time. She wouldn't have even had those years if she hadn't sought a second opinion after our local GP had told her she just had lumpy breasts. My brother's tumour was benign but in the wrong part of the brain and came back after an initial surgery. It gives me the rage that people might think they didn't battle enough, they never really had a chance.

Totally agree. You either have cancer, or you don't. You either recover, or you don't. That's it - there's no "battle".
I really hope that if/when I am diagnosed with terminal cancer that I accept the inevitable with good grace and don't waste my (and everyone else's) time by having pointless treatment.

I cannot imagine how it must feel to be told 'Oh, you're so brave, what a warrior' when you're spewing your guts up, bald and maybe even missing a body part. It is for this reason that I cannot stand these sponsored head shaves. I can understand why a parent might want to do it in solidarity with their child but on the whole, it seems like an absolute mockery. Head hair loss doesn't even begin to cover the ways cancer takes its toll on your appearance. I know it's done for charitable reasons but still...
My sincere condolences to all bereaved posters .

Such a timely post. I have been thinking about this a lot as I was recently diagnosed with stage 4 incurable cancer. I have always hated the term battle when used in terms of cancer. It’s such a gruelling process anyway that to fight it seems so exhausting. I really couldn’t agree more with what previous posters have said. I’m so sorry that so many people have lost people they love to this cruel disease.

Also one of the things that upset me the most was being recommended a book called ‘Cancer is not a Disease.’ I read the synopsis & it talked about cancer being caused by an imbalance in the body & described people being cured when they addressed what wasn’t working in their life. It was also opposed to conventional medical treatment. I found it quite insulting & it felt to me that I was being blamed for having cancer. Also what about children with cancer? They haven’t even had the chance to find the right ‘pathway.’ Similar to positive thinking it seemed to imply that you could heal yourself by readdressing any imbalances. Anyway I don’t know why it upset me so much but it did.

I'm so sorry for your loss but I'm probably one of the few who doesn't agree. Every day of my cancer treatment was a fight. A fight to actually keep going through with the treatment as it was worse than the cancer itself. I won the fight but I haven't won the war. I'm still battling and suffering long term side effects and every day I continue to fight to not give up. I hated ringing that bell on the last day of treatment. Sorry, don't mean to derail. For me it was and is a battle.

Absolutely agree. Nobody talks about losing the battle against diabetes, high blood pressure or various serious autoimmune illnesses. It's obvious that you had a medical condition with ongoing treatment and in some cases it will tragically cease to work.

It also gives the impression that there's a final massive victory when it's the same as a having a chronic illness for at least 5-10 years. The fear surrounding checkups will never truly go away for the patient or their loved ones.

I totally agree with too OP. My DH has had cancer and we both hate the whole 'fighting/battling' rhetoric and the 'stand up to cancer' stuff too. Makes me wince and cringe in equal measure. It's so off - as if you can beat it if you try hard enough.

I don't tend to voice it though, uk until U saw this thread I'd assumed everyone else thought it Ok.

My condolences OP. My mum died of cancer earlier this year. I agree that the ‘battling cancer’ rhetoric is at best pointless, and at worst actively harmful. While it (sometimes) gives us comfort to think that we humans are in control of our destiny, with the ability to fight off cancer etc the reality is just not true.

If you’re going to use a war analogy - my mum’s body was a battlefield. It was the site of a battle between cancer and various medicines and other treatments. Trying to twist this into a battle between the patient and the cancer just doesn’t work.

My mum 'won' against her first cancer after surgery, chemo and radiotherapy and with ongoing hormone suppression that caused an early menopause. So a kind of a win. She was in remission anyway for over 10 years

But then it came back with mets all over her body 10 years later and eventually it killed her.
So she did not 'win the war'

The funny thing was that she never ever thought she would. She never regarded herself as having 'won' or being cured after the first cancer. Everyone else did but she never did. She told me that she always thought it would come back and kill her one day and she would always be really nervous at the annual check ups. It didn't ruin her life or hang over her the whole time in between but it's just that she never really believed that idea that she had won and I'm sure she can't be the only person to feel that way.

I think it's fine if it does help some people or is relatable to some or even many but I just wish it wasn't the only way we can speak about cancer.

Sending so much love to you all

I’m missing my DH terribly tonight. He died aged 37, 3.5 years after a terminal brain cancer diagnosis. He was a naturally fun and positive person and dealt with it all with such grace. He’d never been in a fight in his life so no battle terminology in our house; it wouldn’t have made sense.

I wish I’d lived those 3.5 years with as much grace as he did. I fell short, and I feel that often. He was everything to me. If there was a fight and it was lost, I was the loser.