Here is BBC reporting on the unusefulness of the term https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47002578
Here is a Wikipedia page on the topic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_metaphors_in_cancer
The metaphor I prefer to use, that is not original to me, is that I got on the wrong fucking bus, and now we're headed somewhere I never asked to go, and there's no getting off. I am scared shitless, doing whatever I can to slow the bus down. There's nothing courageous about taking the next chemo, wishing not to die.
Have you looked at trying psilocybin? It seems to be very effective at lessening fear of death in end of life situations.
Chemo every 3 weeks, all the quarterly CT scans and the waiting for the results that will tell me if the current regimen is working or not (current one is "working" in that nothing's growing...but nothing's shrinking either). All the MRIs which will tell me if anything has metastasized in my brain, and waiting patiently for -those- results (we caught one last fall and radiated it out). The never quite feeling like I have enough energy to do "normal" things like mow the lawn. Being the dad who has to take a nap every day while my kids slowly grow up. All the worry about what happens when this chemo medication stops working (they all do after some time), will I have enough warning that it's not working or will things double in size before they can find out. All the people who get you alone and then it's "but seriously, how are -YOU-?" The well meaning people who say "well attitude is half the battle!" (hint - it's not). The overall feeling of complete helplessness, like there's nothing I can do that's going to influence how this goes, when it decides it's going to go sideways. Knowing that they'll never do surgery on me because the numbers say in the time I'd need to recuperate, something somewhere else inside of me that didn't show up on a scan would have time to grow.
Does any of that feel like a battle? Like I'm courageously fighting?
(I apologize, this isn't exactly what you asked about, and I'm not writing an angry response here to anything you wrote, I promise).
Personal feelings aside, your body is literally fighting an alien immortal invader. what chemo tries to do is to kill the cancerous cells. That's were the "battle" metaphor comes from.
It's not a game of chess.
Anyway, depending on the type of cancer, stage 4 survival rates are improving year over year. It's something we are getting better and better at treating, because we are collectively not surrendering to a death sentence without putting up a fight against the things that try to kill us to try'n literally kill them before they do it.
Now, I come from a family of people who mostly worked in healthcare, cancer might be a sensitive topic, I can understand that, but nobody gets annoyed if we say that someone is battling COVID or fighting for their life after an accident that put them in a coma.
It's a battle, literally, not because the patients are heroes or warriors or something like that, but because it is literally what's happening inside our bodies when they stop functioning normally.
Take what I'll say next in the most charitable way possible, please. I am not native English speaker and I might make mistakes and miss a lot of the nuances I want to convey.
Not dying is always a victory, no matter the reason your life is in danger. Death will eventually win, but that's no reason to give up.
I wish you all the best.
> if you die the cancer also dies at exactly the same time. So that to me is not a loss, that's a draw
I am responding to the weakly linked poll, which I didn't read because there wasn't actually a link provided (that's why it is weak). YouGov is not a complete URL. Did you mean YouGov.io? Or perhaps YouGov.porn? Would we have better luck with YouGov.com, or will that lead us to a similarly questionable site?
Response: Um, okay. I'll be sure to not to mention such words when I refer to my girlfriend who is "having so much fun" with uterus cancer.
The issue is around bellicose metaphors in oncology. While some people respond to that language, many do not. In particular, in some studies it increases feelings of guilt regarding the transition from active to palliative care in situations where the malignancy is not responding to active treatment or where the patient doesn’t want to accept the adverse effects of treatment, as in “Oh, you’re giving up?”
But surely there are choices of language that are neither war-like nor cynical.
Words create worlds.
Translation: You seem to be claiming that "the issue" is about hostile rhetoric regarding the study and treatment of tumors.
> While some people respond to that language, many do not.
I'm not understanding what you are trying to say here. Do we not all respond to hostile rhetoric in unique ways? When you say that someone "does not respond", surely you mean something else?
> In particular, in some studies it increases feelings of guilt regarding the transition from active to palliative care in situations where the malignancy is not responding to active treatment or where the patient doesn’t want to accept the adverse effects of treatment, as in “Oh, you’re giving up?”
When you say that "in some studies it increases feelings of guilt", what is the "it" that you are referring to exactly?
"to respond" in the clinical world and what she or he is referring to here means having a positive reaction to treatment: https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-term...