THREAD: I wanted to talk/tweet about the use of “fighting” imagery when we talk about cancer, and using the term “beat” to indicate success. It’s a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about because my upcoming book employs it, right in the title: “Beat Breast Cancer Like A Boss.”
Also, I heard an excellent @BBCRadio4 piece that explores this topic in such a nuanced, thoughtful way. If this is something you’re interested in, I highly recommend you listen. bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…
The interviewer spoke to several people who said they found such militaristic metaphors unhelpful, for various reasons, including that fighting suggests active participation, when in fact when it comes to cancer, you’re really a passive conduit.
And it’s really the treatment – the drugs, the radiation, the surgery – that’s doing the fighting. (This piece also delved into the historical origins of this bellicose language, and it’s really fascinating.)
There’s also the fact that it sets up a really terrible binary, suggesting that if you get through cancer and remain cancer-free for the rest of your life, you’ve “won,” and that if you don’t, you’ve “lost.” And that is unfair and ridiculous.
What it means is that the treatments in place have failed that person. It has nothing to do with how hard a person fought. (Personally – and I advocate for this in the intro of my book – I believe we should redefine what it means to “beat” cancer.
It doesn’t mean getting rid of it. It means continuing to defiantly live life, and pursue the things that make you happy, even if that looks different after a cancer diagnosis.
It means finding joy in the people you care about, even if relationships sometimes change following a cancer diagnosis. It means – as the amazing @tginceo put it – “making cancer my footnote, not my story.”)
Back to the military terms though. Despite the negative associations with battle language, some of the BBC panelists did acknowledge that using terms that connoted active participation in cancer treatment was indeed good for their mental health.
That’s definitely something that many of the people I interviewed in my book said. They can all accept that the drugs are going to do their job, or they’re not, and that’s the way it is. BUT you CAN choose to make yourself an active participant in the process.
It might not make your body respond to the drugs, or the treatment, any differently, but it might help how you feel about it. And how you feel, in general.
Here’s how UCLA champion gymnastics coach @OfficialMissVal put it: “Every single thing we do in life is a choice, starting with the thoughts that we feed and the thoughts that we starve…
And I could choose whether to be scared, I could choose whether to have a pity party, I choose to say 'why me?' I could choose to think negatively. I could choose to feed
those thought bubbles or I could choose to feed the thought bubble of...
those thought bubbles or I could choose to feed the thought bubble of...
... 'Whoa, I live at a time that has the chemotherapy that can kill the [cancerous] cells in my breast. Wow, this is going to be amazing.'
My fabulous TV news colleague and friend @JenGriffinFNC found putting her experience in military terms helpful (perhaps unsurprising given she’s a Pentagon correspondent!): “I’m the Commander in Chief. Al Qaeda cells have taken over parts of my body and I have signed
the Execute Order and sent in the Navy Seals with a shoot to kill order.”
The bottom line is that this sort of language doesn’t work for everybody. It’s become convenient shorthand, and leaves a lot of people feeling uncomfortable. It’s incumbent on people who live and work around people with cancer to be sensitive to the type of language theyre using
and also understand if the people with cancer don’t want to give you a crash course in what type of language they would prefer. And for those who do have cancer, find the language that works for you.
The BBC panelists said more neutral language like “experience” can be useful. And if you want to think of yourself as the Commander in Chief sending in the Navy Seals, then by all means. It’s your experience, and no one else’s.
If this thread is at all helpful or interesting to you, or speaks to something you're going through, I have a whole book on it coming out on September 15th. You can pre-order it here. barnesandnoble.com/w/beat-breast-… thanks for reading.
