Cancer isn’t a battle, it’s cancer | Notes from a cancer spouse
Published in
1 min readFeb 4, 2016
Sadly, Victoria Wood has died from cancer — but no way did she ‘lose’ a ‘battle with’ it. She has died from it. My wife Jane had cancer too, a very serious Stage 4 cancer. Victoria Wood and my wife were very ill— but neither of them ‘suffered’ from cancer and they were not ‘victims’ of it. Both lived with cancer — but it was not a ‘fight’ to ‘lose’, or to ‘win’. Happily, my wife got better — but even then, she did not ‘survive’ cancer, nor did she ‘win’ a ‘battle’ with it. A major problem with the language of fight and survial is it promotes guilt about losing and not surviving …
