On cancer and "toughness"

[Ms. Toad]

70. While we're on the subject of language,

I hate the term survivor - although I'm not sure I can articulate why.

I think it has to do with being invested in coming out alive at any cost (on one end of the spectrum). Having watched my grandmother live with metastatic breast cancer and emphysema for more than 2 decades, wistfully wishing with the death of every other physically vital relative that it had been her, I know that I would prefer fewer quality years than more miserable ones.

At the other end of the spectrum, I was artificially declared a survivor at the moment of diagnosis. So cancer is gone? Really? Before I've even had surgery? If not immediately, though, at what stage in the spectrum of treatment do I become a survivor (i.e. is cancer in my past) - diagnosis? surgery? radiation? chemotherapy (for me 10 years on aromatase inhibitors)? What about the sarcoma risk I bought into when I agreed to radiation therapy - that grows (rather than decreases) over time? Declaring myself a survivlor at some arbitrary point means that if cancer rears its ugly head again, I will have failed, lost the battle, etc. - or whatever relevant term of defeat seems appropriate.

I have cancer. I will have cancer the rest of my life. Present tense. I've run across a term that fits more comfortably for me than survivor - NED: no evidence of disease. I hope it will stay that way - I hope it will stay that way for a long time. But the reality is that I'm the 5th breast cancer if 4 generations, with other reproductive cancers thrown in the mix. Chances are, I will not be NED for the rest of my life. And ultimately, I have to be OK with that. That is easier if I treat cancer as a part of my life, rather than something I'm constantly terrified will return.