People say things like cancer patients are brave, heroic and strong but cancer can affect anyone, brave or cowardly, heroic or villanous and strong or weak. And pretending that cancer happens to an "exemplary few" doesn't really help in any kind of awareness campaign. While it may help encorage some people, it also creates a mindset where people view it as something that happens to someone else (i. e. these exemplary few) and not them, which is utterly counterproductive. I just don't get how you can argue that people with cancer are exemplarary yet are people just like us. Aren't the two mutually exclusive?
Do you think we should put people with or who survived cancer on a pedestal or view them as exemplary?
Well regardless of if that person is weak, cowardly, or villanous, as you put it, they still are having to walk through the battle of cancer which is a tough battle to say the least. That in itself takes a certain amount of strength. And I don't think it unnecessarily means that cancer patients are any stronger than the rest of us, it's just that is their battle, and everyone else has their own battle requiring equal strength. For some it's drug/alcohol addiction. For some it's child loss. And the list goes on. It's an encouraging reminder for those people who are faced with that particular battle, while ya know an 6 month sober coin is the same reminder to people in that battle.
Well the "battle" of cancer is not a battle at all, cancer is a disease and you don't "battle" diseases, you get treated for them. dyingmatters.org/story/cancer-illness-not-battle It's no doubt a struggle to endure the side effects of the treatment and a fight to get up every day when you're in pain. However battles have winners and they have losers, diseases have victims and survivors.
Call it what you will, but that doesn't change anything that I said. And agree to disagree. Not everything fits into a victim/survivor box, tied with a neat bow. It's not all physical. They are fighting emotional battles in my opinion. So while they physically may be a victim and lose their life to that disease, they may have emotionally won the battle against that disease. Battle: fight or struggle tenaciously to achieve or resist something. If they've achieved doing it their way, and choosing which path to walk down, and which weapon to fight whatever battle they're faced with, they're strong.
My opinion that it is indeed a battle and yours that it isn't. And emotional battle: Have you never gone through something that just rocked you to your core? Lucky you.
I have been through plenty of things that "rocked me to the core" and it was a struggle, and I learn new things from each indecent. But that's beside the point, how do you win the emotional battle against cancer or how have "they've achieved doing it their way, and choosing which path to walk down"?
As opposed to whatever their other options are. You always have choices. The battle: cancer. Choices/paths: do you want to fight/treat it? How aggressively do you want to fight/treat it? Would you rather not treat it and enjoy to the fullest the rest of your time here? Would you rather skip doctors and seek a more faith driven approach? That is doing it their way. Choosing to die in a hospital bed, or your own bed, or in the mountains somewhere watching a sunrise. Their way.
Well, a common misconception about cancer is that either you endure the agony of the treatment or you don't, and live life to the fullest followed by a peaceful and pain-free death in your bed in a serene picturesque setting surrounded by your loved ones. This is utterly false; in the process of taking your life cancer can cause you so much pain that as terrible as chemo is, it makes it look like a cake walk.
I just had a loved one die of cancer last month, so I am very aware of what it truly looks like. Anyway, you have your opinion and I have mine. Good night.
Yeah, and I wasn't arguing my opinion, I was inquiring into yours. Do you mean people won their "emotional battle" if they manage to enjoy the rest of their life?
Yes, except the don't even have to "enjoy" it. Just do it their way, however they choose. Obviously cancer doesn't fill you with joy, and any way you look at it, it sucks. But you make the best of a bad situation.
Well no one can force you to take any course of action when faced with cancer so whatever way you chose is "your way" so wouldn't that mean that they "win" the "battle" no matter what?
I'm not making it difficult I'm just stating the way that it is. If you win no matter the outcome than nothing is contested and there's nothing to win in the first place. Again, it's a struggle no doubt but shaking and making up for that is like asking me to shake and make up about whether a triangle has 3 or 4 sides.
Because you don't win no matter the outcome! In a perfect world that would be fabulous, but the sad horrible truth is that people don't always win when they go to battle against their demons. They just don't. Look at the suicide rate. Look at the percentage of people being fed pills like candy so that they no longer even recognize those demons or know that they're alive for that matter. Or people who want to die with dignity from their own homes. You know what happens? As soon as their breathing becomes strained the families pick up the phone and call 911. They revoke their hospice and have you cracking ribs doing CPR on someone who jusy wanted to leave from tbe comfort of their own bed. But unfortunately tbeir families took that choice from them and now they have been snatched back from the light to live with broken ribs and a tube stuffed down their throat and thats how they will spend their remaining days... or remainimg years if tje family chose to save a vegetable.
So you think that if someone survives cancer or dies the way that they want to (and something like going to the hospital against their will doesn't happen) they've won?
I see where you're coming from. I just never got how you "win" against a disease any more than you "win" against something like an earthquake or a hurricane.
Because I don't think any mortal has ever come to the conclusion that they A) can't get cancer and B) cancer survivors are being treated as though they are legends. Instead they are being recognized for going through what literally is hellish treatment where at times the treatment is quite literally more damaging to the body than the disease. But then again maybe I'm just crazy and everybody agrees with you and thinks they are immune to cancer or something.
The thing is anyone would do that given the choice of that or death. And I don't think anyone has consciously come to the conclusion that they can't get cancer it's obvious that a lot of people aren't as worried about it as they should be.
But then you have the question of treatment to completion which is not being accounted for. Even those who are successfully "winning" quit because the treatment is so ridiculously brutal and actually worse than the disease.
I... don't know. It's not that simple. You have to get more specific; the more you look at the populations who choose to quit the more you look at specific types of cancer. And this is without consideration for losing body parts. I mean there's quite a bit to this that is not being mentioned or explored.
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