When you’re diagnosed with cancer, it can feel like you’re suddenly thrown into a fight. The mental toll of the cancer fight weighs heavy, and you soon decide to choose your own words.
When you envision a fight, you see two gladiators with swords drawn or two people with their fists bared, not your head over a toilet throwing up for the fifth time in a day. You don’t picture yourself bawling like an infant on the bathroom floor or screaming at night because the pain in your bones feels like it’s crushing you alive.
FEATURED ON BLACKDOCTOR
So why do people say cancer is a fight? Why do you often hear that cancer treatment is your life’s fight? Yes, the treatments are meant to keep you alive, but what if they don’t? What if you sit in that chemotherapy chair week after week and, by no fault of your own, it’s just not enough? Why do we call this a fight?
Finding Out About The Fight
How could this happen to me? This is one of the very first thoughts many cancer patients have when they are first diagnosed. You think about how much you stay physically active, eat healthy, and get tons of rest. You think you should be in the prime of your life (depending on your age).
The words go in one ear and out the other until you hear, “You’ll just have to fight as hard as you can, and it will be okay.” It gives you immediate pause.
What Is A Fight?
Merriam-Webster defines a fight as:
Verb: to contend in battle or physical combat, especially to strive to overcome a person by blows or weapons
Noun: a hostile encounter
Based on this definition, it doesn’t sound like you will be in a fight — right? When a person decides to undergo chemotherapy or radiation to sustain life, you have very little control over the outcome. Your tumors may shrink or disappear altogether, but they might remain and not respond to treatment.
At times, you might find yourself sleeping for 18 hours a day, experiencing frequent vomiting, hair loss and a sensation of burning skin.
Black Breasties: Stop Calling Breast Cancer A Fight
How could you fight in these circumstances? It can feel like trudging through mud just to stay alive — nothing like the power needed for a fight. You’re just trying to cope.
It’s hard to marry the idea of a fight with what you may be experiencing. The word “fight” can have an enormous mental toll on you. But this is where you can choose to stop calling breast cancer a fight.
FEATURED ON BLACKDOCTOR
My Cancer Journey
You can call it your journey. Every time you say journey instead of fight, this can make a difference in your treatment, regardless of whether the reality is true or not.
Physicians advise that maintaining a positive mindset can significantly aid in the healing process of your body, as your body, like a sponge, absorbs your thoughts.
That shift in mindset can have you walking into every appointment telling yourself that the news would be good. Each time, any good news sounded even better.
And you soon realize that the unsolicited advice others gave you about your fight isn’t hitting you as hard.
Choose Your Own Words
You never want to be rude and tell others to stop saying it to you, but you also don’t know how to ask them to stop calling your journey a fight. No matter how many people hold your hand during treatment or sit at your bedside while you wake from anesthesia, ready to help in the next stage of your so-called fight, you might feel alone in your journey.