Don’t tell patients to ‘fight’ cancer

MACMILLAN, the cancer charity, has warned against telling patients to ‘fight’ cancer, saying that talking about the disease in terms of a battle leaves sufferers feeling guilty for admitting fear and often prevents them from planning for their death.

Having worked on a cancer ward where I witnessed this for myself, I couldn’t agree more.

I saw how the idea of ‘fighting’ cancer made some people feel a failure when their condition became terminal.

It’s easy to see why. 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’ it. Cancer is the ‘enemy’.

Why do we talk about cancer in this way? Because it offers us a false reassurance that the disease is something we can fight against. By using words such as ‘fight’ and ‘win’, we suggest the patient is responsible for their own recovery when, in reality, the success of cancer treatment relies on drugs, radiotherapy or surgery, not willpower.

It’s also a great deal down to luck — at what stage it was caught, whether it has spread, what organs are affected and so on.

And it’s this arbitrary nature of the disease that makes us profoundly scared. By using active words suggestive of a war, things seem less random. But the flip side is that it implies that, when someone doesn’t win the battle, they are to blame.

Even if we never say this outright, it’s often how those with cancer feel. You should have fought harder; you were not a good enough opponent. This isn’t true. Sometimes cancer is terminal and that’s no one’s fault, certainly not the patient’s.