The other day my friend Gaelen wrote a very thoughtful blog post called The Reluctant (Cancer) Warrior, and asked at the end of it…
Do you like the battle metaphors for cancer, the idea of being a cancer warrior? Do you see living with cancer as a war? What is the cancer metaphor that works for you?
And it came to me that the metaphor that works best for me is the Sword of Damocles. Just hanging there, you know? And you never know when it’s going to fall and take your life away…
All that other “battling warrior fighting” crap is … just crap. It’s an illness fer chrissakes. And mine happens to be terminal. As in – it’s just a question of time. Yes, I could end up with a very long remission this time, maybe even as long as Anne’s (love ya, honey!), which is going on 20 years now. After her docs had given up all hope for her. Or it might end up as fucked up and difficult and complicated as my “cancer bro” Jed’s situation. Or as Gaelen’s, for that matter. Seriously, for someone with stage IV cancer I have – so far – got off rather easy. Well, if you call three major ops and being on chemo twice (all since May 2008) “easy”. But compared to Gaelen & Jed, it’s been a walk in the park.
I just wish people would stop it already with these tired-out and over-used metaphors. Nobody knows why some people survive stage IV cancer and others don’t. To turn it into a “battle” insinuates that if someone dies then they either gave up or hadn’t fought hard enough. Or that Cancer “won”. I hate that. But what I hate worse are people who think they have even the remotest clue as to how I feel and refer to what I am going through as a “journey”. I am very sorry (well okay, I’m not really), but I will not allow anybody to pidgeon-hole my whole messy whack of emotions, strengths and fears into something that they feel comfortable relating to.
Anne said this on my “borrowed time” post ..
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could “donate” time to each other?
Wouldn’t it indeed? And wouldn’t it be even more wonderful – all things considered – if I could do a couple rounds of chemo for Jed and have it count towards his recovery, or have a liver resection for Gaelen (I’m a fiend at recovering fast from ops). Or if someone could wave a magic wand and at least make it so that none of us “battling cancer” ever had to worry about where the money was coming from.
Having said that, I have been so lucky with all the people who have sent donations and who truly made it possible for me to get through – so far – financially. My family hasn’t sent me a dime, yet people I have only met here on my blog, or elsewhere on the internet, have been generous beyond belief. That really blows me away. And I do try to “pay it forward” in any way I can.
I shall now refer you to the Cancer Etiquette post, for those who may have missed it first time round…
casa azahar 
I also hate that “fighting cancer” phrase. Everyone deals with illness in their own way. Just because someone is not talking super positive and wearing a big smile does not mean they are not dealing with their illness and wanting a full recovery. If people seem like they have “given up” it is probably because they are really, really sick. I was friends with a women dying of cancer and all our “new agey” friends wanted her to be positive and keep trying different alternative therapies. So much that she blamed herself for not being able to heal.
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Oh, I don’t even dare go on for long about the whole “wellness community” and the clots of people who believe there is Only One True Way to deal with having an illness. There are people who will not rest until they have proven that your illness arose because of some “secondary gain” that you get from it, for example. I ran like hell from an osteopath who wanted to play that game with me, and from the job where repeated exposures to all kinds of gross chemicals were making me sick.
I had wondered how people who are actually having to be treated for cancer felt about that “warrior” archetype and all the rhetoric that’s been built around it. I find it exhausting even to listen to.
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Az, I tried…but you succeeded far better than I at expressing what I have felt for so long about being called a ‘cancer warrior.’ Sword of Damocles is a perfect metaphor.
I am dancing with cancer–leading, for the moment, but that can always change. And if we could donate time to each other, you know you’re welcome to any I can spare. I can do PT like a trouper. 😉 Be well, amiga.
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I know its not the same, but this post reminds me of my friend Emma who uses a wheelchair now, having been paralysed in an accident in her late teens.
She used to get completely hacked off by people’s unfair expectations of her as some kind of brave and plucky heroine, stoically accepting ‘the cards she had been dealt’… as she used to say: “I didn’t f***ing ask to be paralysed, so why can’t people just deal with me having a normal personality, and being a pissed off cow sometimes, rather than expecting a saint?”
Those cancer battle metaphors would drive me nuts, too. I agree, they are loaded with unspoken judgement about how hard one is ‘supposed’ to ‘fight’.
And as for the ‘cancer journey’ metaphor, that makes me even more sick than the whole ‘better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ crap.
All I can say is I think you’re blinking marvelllous, and not just because you have been so honest about the cancer, but because you’ve remained a caring, creative, funny and intelligent individual with thoughts to spare for other people even at your lowest points.
Az Rocks!!!!
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How awful of those people to do that to someone who was dying. Pauline. I mean, there are no words. Other than shame on them!
Well, I suppose there are some people who get into it, Sled. I guess it’s not unlike religious people believing their god meant this to happen to them for a REASON and, well, whatever. I knew a person who once had what I would call a “brush with cancer”. Stage 1, no major surgery, no chemo needed, 97% chance of full recovery…yet this person loved going on about being a “cancer victim” long after the fact, milking that particular “status” for all it was worth. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were still doing it and would say that in terms of being sick, cancer is the least of that person’s worries. So maybe that whole warrior thing does work for some people. Serves some sort of personal need. But I mostly hear it said by people on the outside looking in, you know?
*falls off chair*
*gets back up again*
That is very generous of you, Gaelen, even though we both know that you can write circles around me … but hey, thanks for the compliment. 🙂
You cannot possibly begin to imagine what a breath of fresh air it was to find you on the CC forum. There was someone not pulling punches, not prettying things up, not creating false hope and not afraid to speak her mind … I was sooooooo grateful for that. Made me feel right at home.
Woo, it isn’t even the same for me and Gaelen, and we both have Stage IV cancer. And I don’t think that I am somehow “better off” than your friend … it’s amazing to me how many people hesitate to talk about their own or someone else’s problems because they aren’t considered to be AS BAD AS MINE.
You said it yourself, woo… “you’ve remained a caring, creative, funny and intelligent individual with thoughts to spare for other people even at your lowest points.”
I’m telling ya, the day I cannot genuinely care about another person is the day I’ll want to die. Because for me, that’s what living is all about.
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