I’m OK with it. The problem is there isn’t anything I prefer more.
I don’t love it but I’m not going to quibble with the little things that people do to help them cope with death.
My mom was an amazing compartmentalizer. She knew there was a lump in her breast that was gradually replacing her breast with itself, but she never got it looked at, let alone diagnosed and treated. She had it for at least ten years and she only told my father and that was only because she had to explain why she wasn’t letting him see her breast. I heard about it only a few days before she died because my father finally told me.
In those ten years my mom wasn’t a cancer patient or a fighter or survivor or whatever. They went on trips all around the world and she had good times with her hobbies and her loved ones. The cancer spread throughout her body so she did have less of an appetite and it filled her lungs so she had trouble climbing stairs (I picked up on NONE of these clues :smack:) but overall she had a good life during that time and her days in the hospital were mercifully short. She had a DNR and didn’t want anything extraordinary (they did one thoracentesis and that was enough).
Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying I am so proud of her for living her way and not having any fear. I hope I have the guts to do the same and not become part of this whole cancer machine. The thing I find funny about the whole “Fuck cancer! I will beat this monster cancer” is it’s your own cells. It just seems natural that some will go faulty. How can I truly hate a part of myself and want to poison myself. I guess I will find out eventually how I am able to do, since overall I’m a pretty fearful person!
I guess my father’s recent diagnosis and his decisions has really brought my distaste for the metaphor to the forefront.
My father is 85. While in general good health for much of that time a period of high blood pressure did cause some kidney damage and these last few years he had circulation problems. The latter has impacted more of his organs, including the liver. The upshot is that there is no way he could possibly endure chemotherapy for his cancer. It would kill him, very quickly. Surgery is not an option - the cancer has already spread. Radiation might slow it down but the side effects would be miserable and for his type of cancer it would, at most, get him a month or two but it would be a month or two lying in bed exhausted, unable to eat, and it has NO chance of curing his cancer.
So dad isn’t “battling” anything. His only request is to be kept as comfortable as possible and he already has his DNR made out, power of attorney/medical proxy, and the other paperwork in order.
You know what? I’m OK with that. Not happy, mind you, I’d much rather have a healthy dad, but I’m OK. That’s the best we’re going to get in reality.
But, Oh, lord! - people are constantly telling me not to give up hope, pray for a miracle, look into this or that, FIGHT THE CANCER!!! Well, first of all, it’s not my decision, it’s dad’s. Second, this is not a fight you can win. He has terminal cancer. It WILL kill him, most likely before the end of the year.
I think that clothing cancer in war metaphors, while of benefit to some (but not all) survivors, is NOT a universal good. It can lead to pressure on the sick person to engage in treatments that may not be in their best interests, that may even cause more harm than good. It puts the terminal cases in a sticky situation - you’re fighting a hopeless battle? It also doesn’t fit well with people who choose not to fight. I’ve known several such, and it wasn’t done out of refusing to face reality but rather because they faced reality. I had a friend who died of esophageal cancer. By the time it was discovered it had already metastasized. He was urged by some to have his stomach and esophagus removed, but that would not have cured him, would have left him recovering from major surgery AND battling widespread cancer at the same time, and left him with permanent, miserable side effects for which there was no good answer. What was the point? None of that would have extended his life, and stood a good chance of shortening what time he had left. He did have surgery to reduce the size of the primary tumor to make him more comfortable and to allow him to eat and drink again, but that was it.
IF there was a reasonable chance of a cure that would be one thing, but cancer treatment is awful, a terrible toll on the body, and it makes people absolutely miserable, sometimes making them feel sicker than the cancer itself does. If you can not win why would you subject yourself to that?
If you must clothe the disease in battle metaphors, that’s like torturing yourself with hot pokers prior to going into a losing battle rather than making the best of your last night.
When my dad dies it won’t because he “lost his battle with cancer”, it will be because he was hopelessly ill and elected quality of life over quantity. I wish we had a quick metaphor for that, don’t you? If we truly believe in patient choice and personal autonomy we should have that metaphor but we don’t. If my dad wanted to fight to the bitter end that would be one thing (my father-in-law was that way, and I also supported his decision to go down fighting) but he doesn’t. I will support my dad’s decision to eat, drink, and be merry in the face of death. I prefer people NOT make up stories about “battles” that aren’t happening and will not happen.
What **Broomstick **said.
[aside]
There’s a bunch of literature now on breast cancer “survivors” and the social pressure to convert the experience of a first round excision/remission into a life-affirming viewpoint-changing super-woman experience. And the feelings of guilt and emptiness this engenders in the many folks who don’t experience the emotional epiphany called for.
Not to mention the impact that standard narrative has on the still not insignificant number of women who do not survive their first breast cancer diagnosis.
[/aside]
IMO the “battle” metaphor was coined by people who haven’t lived through helping a loved one depart this life. And it’s perpetuated by those who are whistling past the graveyard, hoping somehow that if enough *other *people battle, they’ll be spared in their turn.
I lost my dad just over a year ago after a prolonged period of illness. I am, as I write this, waiting for the call to hear that my grandmother has finally died, also after a very prolonged illness. Yeah, I’d say it was a battle for both of them. For all the rest of the family, too. If the metaphor irritates you, either come up with a better one that will be more popular or stop reading the obituaries.
Would it have been proper to headline this story as “Man Loses Battle With Stupidity”?
In my Advanced Directives I’m pretty upfront with the idea that I’m a pacifist. I’ve had a good life and do not plan on spending the end of it fighting. So yeah, don’t use the metaphor with me, please.
I think it’s just a little imprecise. It should indicate whether the battle was lost by a knockout or was merely a points victory to death.
The metaphor doesn’t exactly annoy me, and I understand why people use it, but I think Broomstick put it very well. It doesn’t apply to everyone, and has some unfortunate implications, particularly with regard to the people who choose not to use all available treatments. I personally wouldn’t say that someone lost their battle, but I wouldn’t judge anyone who did.
Maybe it’s just my suspected Viking ancestry speaking, but there’s nothing dishonorable about dying in battle. Quite the opposite.
I loathe it. Absolutely loathe it. It implies will: those who try the most, win. And it makes you, at the end of your life, a loser. The kind of loser who tried hard, yeah, go you! - unlike those other bastards who didn’t try so hard.
“Died due to cancer” (etc) is much more honest and less blame-giving.
(Survivors is different. You can survive something whether you tried to or not).
And it’s pretty annoying, for some people I know with terminal diseases, to hear that fighting metaphor. I remember a 30-ish nurse saying something like that to my 84yr-old WWII veteran Grandad in the hospice and he just smiled because he was nice and she was trying to be nice.
And then he raised his eyebrows at me and said, in the ridiculously strong Glaswegian accent his became when he was really old, “fuck fighting.”
I would hate to have to tell folks what Mom died of – “breast cancer” invokes so much baggage with it. I would have to say “it’s complicated” – and her obit didn’t mention the cause of death.
I went in for a mammogram only because mom had it and I am firmly middle-aged, so I thought a baseline would be OK to have, not that I would necessarily get treatment beyond maybe a discrete surgery. I thought I was going in for a routine medical test but instead I was swathed in subdued lighting, surrounded by quilts and pictures of “heroes”.
I wish there could be a separate room for non-cancer-patients to have the mammogram!
Because it IS a fucking battle. They may have lost, but they didn’t go willingly. I would be pissed at an obit that implied that I didn’t fight.
~ Helena, who has fought a fucking battle and won, this time.
It doesn’t bother me, and I assume that in most cases, the language was chosen by whichever surviving family member wrote or contributed to the obituary. The one that irks me and is quite common in this part of the Bible belt is “went to be with the Lord.” But again, I assume that line was chosen by one or more family members and reflects their own beliefs so I can’t find that much fault with it. Obituaries, funerals and memorial services are all done for the benefit of survivors, so whatever brings them comfort is OK by me.
I was actually pleased when I went to my current place for routine mammograms to find they had a separate changing room for the men - because, yes, men get breast cancer, too, but their psychological needs are often different than women’s, and they, too, deserve dignity and privacy.
I was also pleased that the waiting room doesn’t emphasize the whole cancer thing - yes, we all know why a lot of people are there, and there are rooms for counseling and sound proofing and boxes of tissues placed in multiple places, but it’s more like a typical waiting room rather than PLACE OF CANCER.
Like I said, I don’t mind people choosing to fight to the bitter end, I fully support their decision, and if they want their tombstone to read “went down fighting” that’s absolutely fine. But like I also said, that doesn’t fit everyone. We all have to go at some point, of some thing, and we should respect those going quietly into that long night as much as we respect the fighters. I want to see truth, not some standardized narrative imposed on peoples’ lives.
I, for one, find it a lot less unpleasant to say my dad lost his battle with depression than describing exactly the outcome you’d expect from someone whose depression got the better of them. I think it’s just softer language for describing what happened.
I think it often leaves the impression that the patient didn’t “fight” hard enough or somehow had an imperfect “battle strategy” and it shifts the blame to the patient.
Heather Cleland (herself diagnosed with cancer) writes:
The language around cancer—of “battles” fought, won, lost, and succumbed to—fails to consider the sheer chance of it all. Sure there are cancers that we bring upon ourselves, but most are a result of the tiniest bits of bodies going rogue for reasons we’ve yet to understand. To speak of lost battles as though the warrior didn’t want victory badly enough projects our proclivity to control outcomes onto something that cannot be controlled.
and another good article
Yep. My gf had breast cancer. She is fine now, three years later. We know that statistically she is likely to continue to do well. She absolutely hates terms like battle, survivor, etc. Her dad, one of the strongest men I’ve ever met, died at 90 from a form of leukemia. He took medicine, had procedures done, etc. No battle, just a sucker punch he couldn’t survive.
44 votes yes, 44 votes no!
I like polls that are evenly split.