um, sorry that was more venting than anything else.

*about half the time that reality dictates

‘Pologies, I didn’t read you carefully enough! I see now what you were really saying.

The pressure can be quite intense at times, and take away their free choice how to spend their last days. Guilt, pity, tears, preaching, everything may be harnessed to force them to take the “right” road.

I am defining “winning” here as killing the cancer, as being cured. I don’t have any quarrel with you that there are other ways of “winning”! But usually they come into play when hope of the other kind of winning has been relinquished. If you could win a big road race, i.e. come in first, what are the chances you’d take the win? I would! (in my dreams, sigh)

Yes, The way I think of things, we are all loser and I prefer to acknowledge that losing is part of life and deal with it the best I can. Part of dealing with it is keeping the losses in perspective and choosing to focus on the “wins”, the rewarding and joyful things in life, when I can.

To some extent I can redefine “wins” as I like. If I was in an organized run, I could define my win as finishing or as finishing in a certain time. I can see how someone can do that with dying from cancer. They can say “I’ve had a good life accomplished a lot. In the end, I think I’ve won.” In fact, I CAN do that with someone who is very elderly. But I just can’t do that with someone who is not very elderly, who should, in my mind, have more time, who will be missed desperately…I can’t honestly redefine that as anything but a loss.

But it is one loss, which is only a part of a bigger picture.

Now, obviously my comments have moved away from the problem that some people will imply that a person who died from cancer is a “loser” because they didn’t try hard enough, they didn’t pursue enough alternatives, or they were not “positive” enough. That approach just sucks. IMO – It is basically throwing a vurnerable person under the bus in an attempt to feel safely in control of your own life. That is not at all what I am getting at. If I ever do that, someone smack me, cause I hate when people do that.

And that runner was not a “loser”, he came in second and did better than every runner but one.

This is the problem with the “winners and losers” attitude. In the The Great Train Race, there are 3,200 entrants. For someone caught up in the “winners and losers” game, there is only 1 winner and 3,199 losers. All but about half a dozen may not even have bothered to enter the race. The reason I participate and, I think, most participate is for the journey – maximising your training in view of the other demands on your time, easing up the training before the event, and planning your strategy for those three gruelling hills and the final ascent to the finish line. The well executed journey is the reward.

http://www.puffingbilly.com.au/news-events/great-train-race/

I would think the problem is if we hold unrealistic or wrong views of the worth of “winners” and “losers”.

This guy was a “loser” but I think many people found his actions worthwhile.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon/2013/01/19/ivan-fernandez-anaya-runner-loses-on-purpose/1847999/

But then I am purely speaking from my perspective. I’m a firm believer in folks using the metaphors that are most compelling to them. Whatever gets you through the night, I say.

But then again, I see it that as a battle, I doubt that she would have described it that way. In so many ways she had a hard life, but still had all these stories to tell that delighted in life…so I think she would have just called it “making the best of things” or something similar.

But people can only bring the mental and emotional resources that they have developed in life to their dying. Not everyone has the same personality, mental or emotional capacity, experiences or disease. So I feel that judgements of what’s right for everyone are not-constructive…there’s definitely not a one size fits all answer.

And also I was appealing to let them be … not din in their ears that they MUST battle it, even if they really don’t want to for whatever personal reasons. Or even ask them their reasons. It might be risk assessment, or a preference for letting life go, or some combination.

Families especially can be very … insistent … that the person with cancer fight on, even when they have had enough. I sometimes wonder if that isn’t sometimes imposed upon children by their parents, or on one spouse by another.

(and sorry to be difficult, but I want to go on using the “fighting cancer” terminology … it expresses something I want to say).

It depends on the cancer as well and the stage at diagnosis.

Breasts cancer is treatable even in advanced stages and curable in the early stages so, of course, you would accept treatment. I would be loathe to describe it as ” fighting cancer”. What’s wrong with saying that you are using the best evidence based treatment available to hopefully control or cure your cancer.

You don’t say what cancer your father suffered from but, if it was, for example, pancreatic cancer, there is nothing really to be done because there is no evidence based effctive treatment available. So fighting it seems like tipping at windmills. Unless you wanted him to fall for the CAM option.

Luckily none of us had fights about how to to approach the disease. That can cause much heart-burning in a family. It wasn’t pleasant watching my Dad go downhill without a struggle, but he’d made his choice and he was quite calm about the consequences.

Here is another aspect of the issue that has not been explored. This is the idea that you are “fighting” your fatal disease. My husband died of Mesothelioma, the surgeon told us he would be dead in two years no matter what treatment or non-treatment we chose. We chose non-treatment, just drugs for pain. On the Mesothelioma websites I visited, patients were going to all kinds of extremes, and mostly had pretty miserable lives, and died within two years anyway. My husband had a pretty good two years, only deteriorating quickly the last month of his life. What bothered me was this unspoken accusation that we did not “fight” this cancer. So, to use all the resources of the medical system, even to no avail, was preferable to accepting the inevitable.

I just finished a book, Pink Ribbon Blues by Gayle Sulik. Though about breast cancer, it has a similar theme – that there is a dominant theme within the cancer community that one must fight, that there is only one right way to deal with cancer with all other stories or approaches being marginalized. Kind of a depressing book, but very interesting.

I empathise. I don’t want my epitaph to be “he finally lost his battle with cancer”.
I also will not accept any investigations or treatments without clear evidence of benefit.
(Note: as far as I know, I do not have cancer at the present time)