A – Z of Breast Cancer: BATTLING AND BRAVERY

How often have you heard the B words? Kylie Minogue is so brave. Poor Jade Goody’s battle against cancer. As if they were standing like Boadicea with sword and shield fighting a beast. I don’t really know what all this battling is about because for the most part cancer patients are passive: surgery is done to you, chemotherapy and radiotherapy too. You don’t really have much say in the proceedings. You don’t get up and do battle with the linear accelerator in the radiotherapy department, you lie on it like a slab of meat as it battles you.

Braving the world

I suppose people mean the mental and emotional effort of trying to keep on top of the situation, and of course, for those whose cancer is advanced there is the physical effort of pushing through pain. I think walking out in a wig or a bandana certainly takes courage but unless you are prepared to stay indoors for the guts of a year, what choice do you have? If you draw the blinds and refuse to come out, your cancer does not go away. If you go under the bedcovers, the cancer goes too. In the past I have looked at cancer patients and asked myself, How do they do that? Now I know. They have no choice.

Hear me out

I am not trying to diminish the experience of others by avoiding the B words. I think of exhausted and sick patients not wanting one more drug or not wanting one more fraction of radiotherapy, getting up out of bed and getting on with it when what they really want to do is lie down, is that battling? I think of parents putting on a smile for their children and getting up to take them to the park when what they really want to do is cry and sleep and I suppose that is what they mean by bravery. I see people doing it all around me and some have even said it of me. One friend even suggested that my family would have been more supportive had I been less brave. I don’t know. And what about the people who die? What about my school mate, or my sister who died leaving their children bereft. Don’t anyone try and tell me they weren’t brave enough or didn’t fight hard enough. That is just plain insulting. Bravery and battling remain alien to me. They suggest to me some kind of fearless, willing action of which I am not capable for the simple reason that I have never been so terrified in all my life. If I could run from this I would.

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