Apparently today is National Cancer Survivors Day. I saw that on Twitter early this morning, when I shouldn’t be checking the internet and should just be trying to get another hour or two of zees. And thinking about it woke me up for good this morning.
I mean, it sounds good, right? It’s something that everyone should be able to unite around. Except I have a problem with the very idea of a cancer “survivor.” It feeds into the dominant narrative of cancer as an entity that is to be fought and defeated.
Who counts as a cancer survivor? Does it involve some length of remission? Time since diagnosis? Do you have to be out of treatment? We’re all cancer survivors until we die. Either everyone diagnosed and alive should be called a survivor, or none of us should. I think often about my seventh grade social studies teacher, who was a “survivor” of breast cancer for many years until it came back and claimed her life within a couple of months. Does she lose her status now? Is she less virtuous now?
The word “survivor” feeds that narrative that cancer is a discrete period in one’s life. You enter the battle chamber, do what you need to do, and either you live or you die, emerging as “cancer victim” or “cancer survivor.” If only it were that simple, or universal. But still, you hear patients, family, laypeople, even medical professionals who make that assumption about cancer. At my last support group meeting, someone had his mind blown by the very phrase “cancer as a chronic disease;” he had never even conceived of cancer as anything but a death sentence or curable ailment.
Yesterday, I met a woman who has had stage IV breast cancer and has been in treatment for 9 years. Her goal isn’t remission or putting it behind her or declaring herself a “survivor” in any tidy sense. She talked about how it can be isolating, even within the cancer community, to not be part of that dominant narrative of battles and victories. I recognized myself in her words.
Cancer is in many cases a chronic disease, and even among those who find themselves in remission, it is something that leaves scars and can always come back. Some people might derive some comfort by dividing us into “survivors” and “patients” and “victims” and whatever other categories, but the world doesn’t really work that way.
Maybe it’s partly my jealousy of people with a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe it’s the pain I have felt for fellow patients who see nothing short of full and permanent recovery from cancer as their only worthwhile outcome, and who endure so much suffering at the expense of their own happiness. But I am not going to celebrate Cancer Survivors day. I am going to celebrate all people with cancer today.
