Why does cancer evoke so much talk of conflict?
Ruby was a lover not a fighter. A dyed in the wool pacifist who avoided all forms of conflict.
She was the child in the kindergarten playground trying to broker a peace-deal between friends who had fallen out.
🧵1/n
Being diagnosed with cancer means you are recast as a warrior, whether you like it or not.
This doesn’t happen with other medical conditions. We don’t talk about battling heart disease or a broken leg.
2/n
When Ruby was diagnosed with cancer, well meaning friends told me she was tough. A fighter. That she was going to be okay.
She really wasn’t a fighter. But she was determined to live.
And she did everything the doctors told her to, to give her the best chance of this.
3/n
Louise Dillon, whose son Fred died of cancer the same month as Ruby, wrote
“There is a reason we don’t send children to war. If cancer is a battle, it is one that nobody volunteered for, that no one understands and everyone would run away from if they could.”
4/n
If Ruby had ever faced conscription she would without doubt have been a conscientious objector.
But as oncologist @marklewismd says, when it comes to cancer: ‘There is no conscientious objection here. Malignancy turns lambs to lions and then slaughters them anyway.’
5/n
Saying that people lost their battle with cancer suggests that, had they tried harder, they might have survived.
But Ruby & Fred didn’t die of cancer because they didn’t try hard enough.
They died because we haven’t yet found a treatment that will cure them.
/ends
PS - Fred should have been turning 18 next week
His friends & family are asking people to donate the cost of a birthday drink to childhood cancer research
So that more effective treatments can be found to save children & teenagers like Fred and Ruby ❤️
justgiving.com/page/buy-fred-…
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