That’s interesting about the use of language in medical matters. I have often thought that with illness, particularly cancer, that words like fighting and battling can be a bit thoughtless and ill-founded. Surely people survive because of their treatment, the stage of the disease, genetic factors, etc, not because they “fought” better than someone not so fortunate.
I do roll my eyes at the classic health descriptions of “massive heart attack” (whether it was indeed massive or not), “rushed to hospital” (why not taken or admitted), “life support machine” (it’s a ventilator. We don’t have machines for all the organs. If anything the intensive care IS the life support), and “routine operation” (the operation may be routine to the hospital, but having an anaesthetic and bits mended/cut out isn’t routine to a patient). And don’t get me started on “stable”. You could be critically ill but stable, unconscious but stable or totally fine and stable.
Another interesting and well presented lecture from JVT tonight.
I read this evening that nurses in France who work in ICU are to receive a monthly bonus of 100 euros starting in January, now there's something for Boris to think about.
@AuntyRach, it’s slightly tangential to your discussion but I get mildly irritated by chronic used as a slack synonym for bad rather than long lasting. As for cancer battles etc, my wife, who has had plenty of opportunities to mull on such matters, is entirely onside with you and @Fire
The “fighting a battle” analogy for those who have cancer does rather imply that if you fight hard enough you will win … so those who don’t ‘beat it’ obviously haven’t been trying hard enough …
Oh yeah? Try telling that to the nine year old girl with an inoperable brain tumour who I worked with and whose single mother I tried to support during the hell she was going through … obviously they should’ve tried harder in that battle …
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I can’t stand mention of the “journey” you go on with cancer. What’s with the journey? We’re all on a journey.
I guess it's a reference to the twists and turns, the drama and the unknown path ahead etc. There are lots of walking metaphors - slow and steady, changing landscapes, obstacles on the road, not knowing what is around the next turn or at the end of the path, a marathon not a sprint, carrying baggage, have companions to walk with you etc. Self help books love a walking and landscape metaphor.
It is useful to know when we are using metaphors. Often they are so much part of common language that we don't notice. We tend to assume they will fit for other people, when they might just irritate. Clocks, gardening, driving, oceans, storms. I guess a good metaphor only works if the audience have the first clue what you're on about.
My own cancer treatment did feel like a journey-slog along a difficult path. It didn't feel like a 'battle'; I didn't want to go into fight/flight but to come out of it.
Maybe it's safe to say that newspaper will always reach for the most dramatic/violent metaphor they can find. "If it bleeds, it leads."
It's obviously different for different people, but there is no doubting the power of positive thought. If that means people feel they are in a battle, and it helps them, then fair enough. With my own 2 bouts of cancer I didn't feel it was a battle, but positivity was important. When diagnosed some people talk about feeling crushed, my attitude was more ok what do we have to do to get rid of it, I never allowed myself to think it was going to get me. I personally knew two opposite scenarios, one where the person gave up, "I hope they don't tell me it's cancer because that's a death sentence " The other was determined to see her daughter get through her GCSC's. The first died within months, the other, continued with some very gruelling treatments, and achieved her aim. There's no way of knowing if that would have been the outcome in any case but the if the second person had not insisted on the doctors trying absolutely everything, she would certainly have died much sooner.
My ex mother-in-law was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. She was a very strong capable woman and wasn't prepared to see her life dwindle away on pain killers and ending up in a wheelchair. She went to an acupuncturist who put her on a macrobiotic diet. She followed that diet to the letter and a year later she was back to her usual self and able to eat what she liked. I admired her for that.
I had a friend who suffered dreadfully with Crohn's disease, his wife got a special diet sheet which they stuck too and after a while he reduced his medication until he was off it completely.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
The more we find out about this world of ours, the more we find how incredibly complex it all is. So if a connection suggests itself, it is probably more likely that one exists than that it doesn't. The world wasn't designed on graph paper with nice tidy boxes!
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Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I personally knew two opposite scenarios, one where the person gave up, "I hope they don't tell me it's cancer because that's a death sentence " The other was determined to see her daughter get through her GCSC's. The first died within months, the other, continued with some very gruelling treatments, and achieved her aim. There's no way of knowing if that would have been the outcome in any case but the if the second person had not insisted on the doctors trying absolutely everything, she would certainly have died much sooner.