sunday musings

Cancer, a combination of Carolyn's article about the recent study, listening to the Radio Lab's podcast with Oliver Sacks after reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/opinion/my-periodic-table.html

take this spoiler to Carolyn's peice:
[quote]....It also challenges one of the biggest prevailing ideas about cancer: the analogy to a battle.

The study suggests "that equating treatment with hope is inappropriate," Charles Blanke and Erik Fromme wrote. "Even when oncologists communicate clearly about prognosis and are honest about the limitations of treatment, many patients feel immense pressure to continue treatment. Patients with end-stage cancer are encouraged by friends and family to keep fighting, but the battle analogy itself can portray the dying patient as a loser and should be discouraged."[/quote]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/23/the-end-of-life-discussion-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-costs/

then to a friend's comment about his MIL's recent passing from lung cancer, and his frustration with the common phrasing "she lost the battle" wishing in place he could put in her obit "Fuck Cancer"

Lead to a moment of sunday afternoon reflection...

I've always found it odd to call it a fight. Waging war against a disease that originates outside of you, like a virus, bacterial infection, fungal infection, foreign host, that makes sense. But cancer is a war against yourself. A civil war, if it had to be classified.

I don't have an answer, I hate cancer, I hate how it has taken far too many people. But it does mental injustice to call it a battle when most can never win. Some can prolong the end, and arguably many forms if caught soon enough are treatable. But that doesn't mean those who make a full recovery are winners, they are lucky/fortunate, they didn't win a battle or a fight. And at the same time those who don't manage to send the errant cells and rapid uncontrolled proliferation packing are not losers, they didn't lose the fight to cancer.

I see how it can work that way, calling it a battle. but Battle in most modern societies demands fighting, and fighting often comes at a higher cost. Paid in quality of life, expense, pain. Medicine is pretty good, not perfect, but they are fairly competant at predicting outcomes, but also more prone to pushing end of term chemo that may make someone's last 6 months miserable with no change in outcome.

Like my friend Mark. For six months he endured monthly administrations of Chemo in a last ditch effort that was arguably completely wasted, the brain cancer had come back and spread and operation wasn't an option. Once a month isn't a big deal, but that's 6 weeks out of his last 6 months when he was too sick to do anything, in too much pain to do more than be confined to bed.

is it really a battle? is it really a war?

isn't there a better way to think/talk about it?

I don't have an answer, other than hopefully science can figure cancer out someday, figure out a way to treat it without killing the patient.

My opinion is pretty irrelevant, O vox in deserto

but it is mine, and i can share it here,

heddwch
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