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.
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?
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.
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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.
When you undergo surgery to remove remaining cancerous cells in your body, you have no control over the surgeon’s ability to get it all during the procedure.
Would the cancer community think the fight was too much for you if you lost your fight and life? Would you be letting them down? But it isn’t only about the lack of control.
At times, you might find yourself sleeping for 18 hours a day, experiencing frequent vomiting, hair loss, and a sensation of
burning skin.
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.
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.
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.
A simple phrase can derail your mindset for longer than you may admit. Words are powerful. They weave stories of trials and triumph, take you on adventures in books, and motivate you when you feel down.
But words can also harm — even if you don’t always realize it. If you want to call it your fight, that’s okay. But it’s also okay to speak into existence your own words and make them far more powerful than anything that may harm you.
Sometimes, no words are needed at all. And you should never feel guilty telling your loved ones just that. Simply being there to love and support is enough.
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