Please Stop Calling My Breast Cancer a Fight

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was suddenly thrown into a fight — or so I was told. The mental toll of my so-called cancer fight weighed heavy and I soon decided to choose my own words.

When I envision a fight, I see two gladiators with swords drawn, their sweat glistening in the sun as they take their stance in the center of an arena. I don’t picture my head over a toilet throwing up for the fifth time that day. I don’t picture myself bawling like an infant on the bathroom floor or screaming at night because the pain in my bones feels like it’s crushing me alive.

So why do people say cancer is a fight? Why do I often hear that going through cancer treatment is the fight of your life?

Yes, the treatments are meant to keep us alive, but what if they don’t? What if you sit in that chemotherapy chair week after week and, by no fault of your own, it’s just not enough? Why do we call this a fight?

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Finding out about the fight

When I was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma at the age of 33, I left my doctor’s office bewildered. How could this happen to me? I exercised 5 days a week, ate healthy, and got tons of sleep. I should have been in the prime of my life — I thought I was.

I remember sitting on the curb of the hospital parking lot. The only person I wanted to call was my grandmother, who previously had endometrial cancer. Her words seemed to calm me until she said “You’ll just have to fight as hard as you can, and it will be okay.” It gave me immediate pause.

What is a fight?

Merriam-Webster defines a fight as:

Verb: to contend in battle or physical combat, especially to strive to overcome a person by blows or weapons
Noun: a hostile encounter

Based on this definition it didn’t sound like I was going to be in a fight — right?

When a person decides to undergo chemotherapy or radiation to sustain life, you have very little control over the outcome. Your tumors may shrink or disappear altogether, but they might remain and not respond to treatment.

When you undergo surgery to remove remaining cancerous cells in your body, you have no control over the surgeon’s ability to get it all during the procedure.

But it wasn’t only about the lack of control. Whenever I heard the word fight, I felt weak and inadequate.

I was sleeping 18 hours a day, throwing up repeatedly, losing my hair, and my skin was burning. How could I really fight in these circumstances? It felt like trudging through mud just to stay alive — nothing like the power needed for a fight. I was just trying to cope.

If I lost my fight and my life, would the cancer community think the fight was too much for me? Would I be letting them down?

I couldn’t marry my idea of a fight with what I was going through. The word “fight” had an enormous mental toll on me. From then on, I told myself I would stop calling my breast cancer a fight.

My cancer journey

I decided to call it my journey. I said the words “my cancer journey” aloud, letting each syllable roll off my tongue and it felt right.

A simple change in language put me on a more positive mental path. I had been told by every doctor and therapist that a positive mindset would go a long way to help heal my body.

Every time I said “journey” instead of “fight,” I felt I was making a difference in my treatment regardless of the reality if that was true or not. It felt like my body could hear me. It knew that I wouldn’t let myself or anyone else down if the treatments didn’t work.

That shift in mindset made me walk into every appointment telling myself that the news would be good. Each time, any good news sounded even better.

I soon realized that the unsolicited advice others were giving me about my fight wasn’t hitting me as hard.

Chose your own words

I never wanted to be rude and tell others to stop saying it to me, but I also didn’t know how to ask them to stop calling my journey a fight. I didn’t want to tell them the weight of their words was crushing me alive.

No matter how many people held my hand during treatment or sat at my bedside as I awoke from anesthesia, ready to help me on the next stage of my so-called fight, I felt alone in my journey.

Words are powerful. They weave stories of trials and triumph, they take you on adventures in books, and they motivate you when you may be feeling down.

But words can also do harm — even if you don’t always realize it. A simple phrase derailed my mindset for longer than I cared to admit. I truly hope you read this and speak your truth so you don’t get derailed either.

If you want to call it your fight, that’s OK. But it’s also OK to speak into existence your own words and make them far more powerful than anything that may harm you.

Sometimes no words are needed at all. And we should never feel guilty telling our loved ones just that. Simply being there to love and support us is enough.

So, please stop calling it my fight because no matter the outcome, I will not lose.