Linda Nolan
Linda Nolan Really sorry to read that yet another well known name, Linda Nolan of the Nolan Sisters, has joined our select but ever growing group, but angry to see yet again the media referring to all clears for her older sister who was dx 6 years ago and hopeful all clear for Kylie soon.
Is it just me that find those 2 words so infuriating ?
No it’s not just you I think it’s cruel for the media to keep propagating this myth. It makes life difficult for the rest of us - when your friends/colleagues get a surprised look on their faces when you respond to their congratulations on being all clear by saying - no, it’s just so far, so good. I even had someone imply that I was clinging on to the attention that I’d received by pretending I’d still got the disease (no, I didn’t flatten them, but I came close.)
Sometimes meaningless reassurance can do us a power of good but this is just being cruel by trying to be kind. The problem is, I think, that the media like things to be black and white and cut and dried. And with this disease, it just ain’t gonna happen.
Beleive you me, come the day that it really is possible to say that we are cured no-one will be shouting about it louder that I will.
You’d think they’d have learnt by now, wouldn’t you?
Love
Anne
xx
Cure And yet my onc says it is possible to be cured of this disease!!
Mcgle
Possible, but not predictable Hi McGle
I think your onc means that some women will be cured of it. The difficulty with breast cancer is that it is impossible for anyone to know whether they have truly been cured, since there are some types that seem to come back as much as 20 years later.
To Christine MH So sorry to hear you got this ghastly disease so soon after giving birth. Having a newborn is exhausting enough without having to cope with bc as well!
Let’s hope that one day there really will be a cure for this awful thing.
Mcgle
— No Challsi — You are not alone. I am sick of sending mail to newspapers and tv shows complaining of this. I BEG you to do the same. Wherever you saw it referred to as an all clear, please google the web site and contact us button and send a mail, … and let them know that there are many many of us on this site who are like bulls with a red rag being waved at them every time the stupid media make this blunder, and make it harder for us to let the public know the true face of breast cancer. PLEASE do this.
Love Joy xxx
(If ever in future you see it again, please state the source so that many more of us can also send in protests. Thank you)
xxxx
No wonder we get confused!! In December, 2004, after a routine check-up for B.C. dx 1998.
The Doc said she was giving me the ’ ALL CLEAR '. I made her repeat these two ‘unheard before’ words in case I was imagining them…which she did…even though I’d just had results of a drained cyst, which came back as normal…lurking behind the cyst was the dreaded ‘Kling-on’…B.C. in the other breast, which wasn’t picked up until the cyst returned after I had been discharged from their care and had to be re-referred.
I now know that you can never be given the ‘ALL CLEAR’, so why do some Docs still say it…why don’t they just say that the likelihood of a recurrance, or, as in my case, a new primary are minimal…at least then you aren’t living with false hope.
I prefer to be given the facts truthfully, like an adult, instead of beating about the bush…but saying that, I can understand that not everyone can handle straight talking and I suppose it’s easier for some people to think there is a cure, which no doubt, there will be one of these days in the not too distant future ( we hope! ).
I also, get fed up explaining that there is no cure…even to my own husband, after he’s read, yet again, that so and so’s been cured!!!
Wee rant over for now.
Marie X
All Clear We have to thank Cancer Research UK for the term “all clear” as they used it in their 2004 advertising campaign:
info.cancerresearchuk.org/pressoffice/ pressreleases/2004/february/38948.
They define exactly what they mean by the term. They say that it means “no detectable cancer after treatment”.
in complete agreement Dear Challsi and others
I too find the words ‘all clear’ utterly unacceptable, especially from the lips of tv presenters, because their words are influencing the perceptions of the general public about bc in a most misleading way.
I have written about this on another thread previously but would just re-iterate that before my diagnosis I thought that ‘all clear’ meant a cure. I now understand that whilst some women never have a recurrence none of us can ever be certain - and ‘all clear’ really only means 'nothing there at the moment ’ - hardly the same as being told you’ve been ‘cured’.
What is so awful about these misleading messages about bc is the potential for inducing complacency amongst non bc women - roughly 10% of whom will develop this disease. It is they, not us (because we know better now) who are really being put at risk by phrases such as ‘all clear’ and the implication of cure. If more women(and men of course) truly understood this disease maybe there would be more public interest and pressure on the powers that be to commission more research into, for example, the possible causes of bc.
Thanks to Joy for her advice on sending e-mails to those who come out with these simplistic statements - I will do so from now on.
love to all of you
Kate