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Comment by borbulon | Hacker News Reader

I have stage 4 lung cancer. I'm not "battling" cancer. It's not a "battle." It's stage 4. Cancer will eventually win. At best I am "prolonging the inevitable." I am not "courageously fighting."

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.

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> I have stage 4 lung cancer. I'm not "battling" cancer. It's not a "battle." It's stage 4. Cancer will eventually win.

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.

I'm sorry about your fate and I wish you all the best.

Have you looked at trying psilocybin? It seems to be very effective at lessening fear of death in end of life situations.

TBH Fear of death isn't really the issue for me (well, maybe a little, but I've done high-dose ketamine treatments twice). Right now it's the fear of living - of doing this same thing for the next 10, 15, 20 years.

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).

I grew up with a cancer-having parent and don't resent my mother for her ever-increasing weakness. I'm glad she was around and hope I can deal with something serious as well as she did.

Much strength to you, that really sucks and you have articulated a lot of latent fears for me.

Thanks for this, it takes courage, skill, and honest reflection to give such a clear picture of what you are going through. And yes, to me it looks like you are courageously fighting.

As an outsider, it doesn't look like a fierce battle but a war of attrition to your will power. From one father to another, I wish you all the strength to carry on. Bon courage, mon ami.

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