CervicalCheck campaigner Vicky Phelan has warned that terms like ‘cancer warrior’ and ‘battling the disease’ are increasing the pressure on patients who are sick and scared.
It comes in the wake of some of the commentary around Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding's cancer diagnosis earlier this week.
On Newstalk Breakfast this morning Ms Phelan, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer two-and-a-half years ago, said people mean well when they tell someone they will fight off the disease.
She warned however that the terminology can increase the pressure on someone who has just been given some very scary news.
“Just because somebody dies from cancer, maybe after six months or a year, does it mean they didn’t fight it as well as anybody else?” she asked.
“I really don’t think it is fair on the person who is living with the cancer or on the family that is left behind.
“I have had this conversation with people when they are saying, ‘do people think she didn’t fight hard enough?’ There is an element of that.”
Cervical cancer patients Vicky Phelan and Aine Morgan outside the gates of Leinster House, 05-12-2018. Image: Leah Farrell/RollingNewsShe said people tend to use terminology like ‘battler’ or ‘fighter’ because they don’t really know what to say to someone who has just been diagnosed.
“I think, in Ireland, we are very poor at sympathising with people or being honest,” she said.
“I would prefer if people said to me when I was diagnosed first, ‘Jesus Vicky, this is shit. I am so sorry that you have got this diagnosis.’
“Ask me about my treatment but don’t say to me, ‘oh you are going to beat this’ because you don’t beat cancer – that is the reality of it; you don’t.”
Cancer warrior
She said terms like ‘cancer warrior’ give people something to say without addressing the reality of the situation.
“This is a shit situation; you have got cancer and nobody knows what will happen at the end of the day,” she said.
“Some people get diagnosed at a very early stage and still die from cancer so it is a lottery and even for me to still be alive today, I have seen so many women die from this disease over the last number of years.
“That is why I get upset about this type of language – because any of the women I know who died from this disease fought bloody hard until the end.
“It doesn’t mean that just because they died, they didn’t fight hard enough.”
Chronic illness
Ms Phelan said that new treatments mean many people are living with cancer for long periods of their lives.
“I am living with this disease and that is what I always say,” she said.
“I say I am living with cancer; I don’t say I am fighting it because you can’t fight it; you have got this disease in your body and you have to learn to live with it somehow.”
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