"Pick your battles wisely" goes the saying.
And so, in pursuit of wisdom, I choose not to wage a militaristic campaign against cancer. I am not at war. I am not battling it, or fighting it.
The words we use are important in defining how we relate to things. For me, at present (I am acutely aware that this may well change as I get into the belly of treatment), using the language of war feels neither helpful, nor wise.
Combative metaphors pit me against cancer, making me feel like a gladiator being thrown into the arena with it. To me, they suggest that somehow it is my responsibility to bear arms and fight it, and that the success of my treatment will depend on how hard or well I do battle.
They also imply that if the treatment is not successful or if the cancer returns, then the disease has won and I have come up short or somehow not tried hard enough. That, essentially, I have failed the ultimate test. That feels like a cruel double whammy.
Clearly, I have a role to play in keeping myself as healthy as possible during my treatment, trying to make sure I eat well, rest and watch out for my own mental wellbeing. But for me, to use language that suggests in any way that I carry the ultimate responsibility for the final outcome of my diagnosis feels, at best, like a denial the role of medical science, and at worst, like the addition of an immense and additional pressure onto my shoulders.
To be at war with the cancer implies a zero sum game. Cancer or no cancer. Win or lose. You beat it or it beats you.
Of course, at its most extreme - this is true. Ultimately, you live or you die.
But I am learning that a life lived with cancer is defined by nuance and uncertainty. It is a terrain of odds and statistics, of 'as far as we can see', 'for now', 'each case is different' and 'each cancer is different'. It is - just like the rest of life - a landscape of shadows and continuous incertitude. To focus solely on some final destination and not on the winding journey, seems somehow to steal away the potential for finding positive moments along the way and for celebrating small joys.
To be battling cancer implies a relationship of brittle edges and sharp angles. But frankly I do not much feel like a hard, wired, fighting machine. Instead, I feel vulnerable and at times fragile, friable and slightly fatigued. And that is ok. I do not want the pressure of feeling like I should be anything other. Or that I am in some way not being or doing enough.
This raises a question. If this is not how I want to describe my relationship with cancer, then how do I want to refer to it?
I am lucky to have always had a positive relationship with my body. Cancer has not changed that. My body is not my adversary in this, its time of need. Rather I feel compassion towards it and am supporting it as best I can to heal and be healed.
I fully appreciate that this viewpoint may well be challenged as I move into chemotherapy in the coming weeks - a treatment that will make me feel more ill than the disease itself has. I know I may well struggle with this. But for today, this is how I feel, and I am learning the hard way that all we can ever do is take one day at a time.
It is hard to find the right words to describe my current relationship with cancer.
For example, to say 'I have breast cancer' is possibly not now technically correct. It quite clearly was, for the three short weeks between diagnosis and my operation. But, as far as they can tell, the mastectomy successfully removed all existing tumours.
But does this mean I can say I am cancer free?
That does not sit comfortably. What about any lingering cancer cells that had not yet developed into tumours, but have the very real potential of doing so if left untreated? Surely I can't be a cancer survivor when I am just at the beginning of this journey?
Like it or not, whatever the technicalities, cancer is currently a very real presence in every waking moment of my days (and nights). But it is not everything and, as surreal and drastically altered as my life may currently seem, it does goes on.
I am, therefore quite simply, doing my very best to 'live with cancer'.
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