Cancer isn’t a battle you win or lose

VICTORIA Wood lost her battle with cancer this week. Just like David Bowie, Paul Daniels, Alan Rickman and Terry Wogan before her. At least, that’s the phrase everyone uses: ‘lost their battle’. And I hate it. I wish the word ‘battle’ was banned from all reports of cancer killing people. As Susan Sontag discussed in her book Illness As Metaphor, the words we use to describe cancer are the words of war. The cells invade and we fight back. We have an arsenal of treatments to defeat the enemy. The fact this language is so routinely used suggests it resonates with something deep inside us. I think that’s partly because it makes things sound more under our control than they really are. By using words like fight and win, we suggest the sick person is in charge of their destiny, if only they’re brave and resilient enough. In reality, the success of cancer treatment relies on drugs, radiotherapy or surgery. While a positive frame of mind is important, essentially the cancer is destroyed by the treatment the patient receives, not the patient themselves. Survival is also down to luck — at what stage the cancer was caught, whether it has spread, what organs it has affected and so on. It’s actually all very random. Using aggressive, active words helps hide this terrifying reality. It also makes the sick person sound brave and heroic, which is a nice image for people around them to have. No one wants to think of their loved one being scared, upset and powerless. Yet this is the reality of having cancer. It’s not a gallant, noble struggle. It’s damn awful. Most cruelly of all, using these words implies that if you die, you’ve failed. You should have battled harder, put up more of a fight. That’s simply not true.