Cancer Lexicon Needs to Change

Food for thought
Yours is a well written piece, clearly thought out. The end of it, though, where you advise that it is 'all semantics anyway' sort of refutes the notion that one might contemplate and even dispute your arguments.

I will do so anyway, with the best of intentions.

Regarding use of the word 'survivor' by those who have been diagnosed with cancer -- and that is correct, the word is generally applied immediately upon learning that one has cancer -- I think your own definitions, as supplied by Oxford, fortify the appropriateness of the terminology, extending beyong the use of 'survivor' to 'battle' as well.

I have not personally heard of anyone in disagreement with the usage of 'fighting' when used to describe how one deals with a cold or with the flu: one is fighting a cold, one is fighting the flu. No one thinks twice about that usage.

Yet, considering the efforts one undergoes to defeat cancer or to hold off cancer or to delay cancer's insidious effects, fighting a cold pales in comparison.

One does not truly fight a cold. One succumbs, one marginalizes the effects as best he or she can, but one does not actively fight it. One does, on the other hand, actively and diligently fight cancer, with any number of weapons, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and any number of alternative methods.

One survives cancer as one survives any battle: one may not make it through the war, to be sure, but one does not passively accept one's death; one fights, one upgrades one's weapons, one upgrades one armor, one does what one has to do to keep surviving, to keep living, just as one does in a battle that involves guns and grenades and missles and snipers and so on.

Surviving a cancer diagnosis IS in fact, continuing 'to live or exist, esp. in spite of danger or hardship'.

As for the issue of tense, I know of no one who suggests that survival is anything but current tense. The only people I know who are uncomfortable with being labeled survivors are those who have been recently diagnosed and who have not yet undergone treatment. I would argue that they are survivors nonetheless, because they are alive, because they are pursuing the continuance of their lives, because they are pursuing the defeat of cancer.

Your tale about the person considering herself a fraud because, apparently, cancer has returned, is a sad one indeed. She is, after all, the epitome of survivorship, and has the best possible chance to exemplify survivorship: once down that road and cleared, now facing it again, she will hopefully want to continue her fight, her battle.

What happens to her, ultimately, what happens to you, my friend in remission, ultimately, will never take away the fact that you were (and are) a survivor. On the day you die, to be blunt, we will say that you WERE a survivor. Until that day, you ARE a survivor.

A recurrence of cancer does not strip you of your survivorship. Being a survivor is not the same as being free of cancer. Being a survivor means that you have faced cancer, may be facing cancer, and that you are fighting, that you are succeeding to a greater or lesser degree, and that you are persevering. There are other names for those who are cancer-free.

Your teeth gnashing over the phrase 'lost the battle' is a rather problematic argument. The victims of 9/11 were not fighting a battle with terrorism, and it is likely that the victim of a drunk driver was not actively fighting drunk driving at the moment.

Cancer survivors ARE actively fighting a battle against a disease that has been diagnosed, with treatments prescribed and administered. Your logic holds no water. It is apt, it is fitting, to say that one has lost the battle with cancer, especially given the efforts that many of us go through, the anguish, the pain, the emotional and physical stress we endure, to fight it, to vanquish it. It is apt. It is fitting.

While you might not considering dying 'losing', a great many of us who fight the battle against cancer consider that not dying of cancer is the ultimate goal, if we are fortunate enough for that to BE a goal. I can assure you that in the event cancer beats me, it would not upset me if my obituary said that I had lost my battle with cancer. And there are any number of kids I coached (and their parents) who would understand exactly what that means: that I busted my **** to beat it and I lost.

Your last several paragraphs indicate what, today, is a somewhat disingenuous notion about cancer: that we are victims, that it is not our fault, that the world is to blame.

If you live in New Jersey and believe that the air and the water and the ground are killing you, MOVE.

The science we have today seems to indicate that cancer is caused by a combination of factors, including genetic predisposition (blame your parents), environment, and behavior. This is why some old bloke can smoke and drink his entire life and live into his 90s, while some child dies of cancer at the age of five. It is not just your environment (and if it is, again, you are free to move). It is not just behaviour (I smoked, I drank, I got cancer, while all of my smoking and drinking friends continue to smoke and drink and dance the day away). It is not just genetics, although I would put my money there, in genetics and epigenetics, as the sources for cures and preventions.

You are correct that this is OUR battle (a word I thought you detested, by the way). The battle has been joined. Cancer survivors, caregivers, scientists, medical professionals, researchers, philanthropists, governments, we are all joined to the battle.

This is a war we will win, I am confident. It may not happen soon enough to save me, but it will happen. You are clearly a soldier in this war, an eloquent one at that, and I salute you for your concern.

Semantics, I would venture to say, are not the problem. Understanding, beyond words, is everything.

Take care,

Joe