long rant!
long rant! Sorry if I offend anyone here but I’ve just been sent yet another email of the internet link to that ad about cancer The Survivor Movie which I absolutely hate!!!
It is only a bend in life’s journey and I will study the lesson before I move onto my life beyond cancer…errrr as I have secondaries that’ll be my life in the coffin then? oh, hold on, maybe there’ll be a cure in the next year or two! think positive!
the moralistic concept that this is some sort of lesson that I should be learning from deeply offends me.I had the imagination to understand the lesson that life isn’t always easy before I was diagnosed and I imagine most people do. I had and still do have a great life, and cancer hasn’t enlightened me in any way or form. It might have enlightened my lovely boyfriend about the pitiful lack of resources in the nhs and as a result of this the lack of professionalism and consideration from many of the staff (obviously the exception rather than the rule) who are supposed to be supporting him/me but I think a couple more years in England would have put him onto that anyway.
I will not give into fear…will not be discouraged…why not??because then I’m weak and missing this rare opportunity to reassess my life? what’s wrong with feeling frightened and discouraged from time to time and why should i act like a superhero for everyone else?
i will see setbacks as opportunities to review the lesson… yes, my setbacks are an opportunity to start new treatment, be positive and look ahead, but the only lesson is that this chemo, that chemo, this hormonal, that hormonal in my particular case did not work.
Many blessings it has brought in my life…I have had many already and expect to continue to do so with or without cancer. However telling my 81 year old mother i’m not going to be around for her …having to leave the job I love, having to leave my boyfriend and my friends, not having children are not what I consider to be blessings… I am (yes yet again) offended by the idea that this is some sort of gift.
Ok I’ll finish now…humility I needed…errr I think this post shows that that hasn’t happened and I don’t see why I needed bringing down in the first place.
Oh and …remember I can still have fun…despite this rant i can and do have lots of fun but I didn’t need cancer to remind me.
I think this ad differentiates people with cancer to people without as if it is some sort of special gift rather than just something life has dealt out that we have to deal with accordingly. I’m happy for all the extra time I can get, but being a human I was fully aware of my mortality anyway and have always made the most of life (despite what this post might imply I tend to see things in a positive light and have always been a glass half full person).
To me the subtext to this ad is that cancer is some sort of judgement from above for a life not lived to the full and the idea is that we have been handed a lesson that can be studied and learned - the implication being that if you study hard enough you are a good person, will heal, and will wind on down that bendy road called life.
Plus…the glossy style makes me think of some dodgy nescafe advert.
I don’t normally post here but i was in such a bad mood from the fourth mailing of this to me that I thought I should let off steam…
Now I feel so much better for getting this off my chest I am off to have a cup of tea.Hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Rachael
Hi Rachael, Firstly sorry to hear you have secondaries…it’s something we all dread them telling us let alone that we have cancer in the first place.
I’ve just looked at the movie you mention as I haven’t seen it before. I must say that it is a bit like a Nescafe advert.
It does try to be positive but I felt that it was saying to me that I shouldn’t give in to fear and worry about setbacks. Where are they coming from !!! I give into fear frequently and the friends and family around me support me when I’m at my lowest. Why should I not do that.
I felt like my whole world had collapsed there in that little room with the consultant and breast nurse… so more than a bend I would describe it as the world coming to a halt for those awful few moments it takes for this sort of news to register.
I don’t feel that I have been blessed and that I have a lesson to learn. We all just take the news as well we can then get on with treatment and hope for the best.
I think it’s trying to tell us to put a brave face on things but I’m not a very brave person.
Glad you could let off steam
Jo
Hi Rachael Hi Rachael,
I agree with you. Who needs a Barbie pink, plastic version of ‘the journey of Breast cancer’ where we all are meant to be saintly, to have learned huge amounts from the experience and have conquered fear, forging ahead with oceans of energy and well-meaning zeal…
Actually I have learned two important things.
-
Humour - and even black humour -helps (not all the time but quite a bit of the time) - something that these hopeful but sadly humourless websites don’t understand.
-
I can’t be cheerful all the time. Some days I will feel sad, tired, unmotivated, angry, asymmetrical and unsexy but the feeling doesn’t last forever and the people who love me still think I’m beautiful.
Have a fun weekend.
Best wishes,
Sue
Hi Racheal What a wonderful post.
I haven’t seen the Survivor Movie but I shudder every time I hear how ‘good’ it is.
Kate Carr wrote a wonderful book : ‘Its Not Like that Actually’ in which she described the ‘shedloads of rubbish’ written about the experience of having cancer. The survivor movie sounds like a classic piece of that rubbish.
Undoubtedly many people with cancer do take comfort from such trite platitudes but I so wish the voices of those of us who don’t think cancer is the best thing since sliced bread were heard as well.
I’m glad that cnacer is no longer talked about in hushed whispers as it was a generation ago but the myths continue in a different form. Cancer is not a golden opportunity to transform our lives and our selves into lovely selfless understanding people skipping joyfully through the Elysian fields. Cancer is simply a nasty incurable disease which will kill many of us prematurely.
And ranting about the Hollywoood movie version of cancer is just so good for the soul.
very best wishes
Jane
Rachel, I loved your summing up, it made me laugh and was so scathingly accurate :).
SuperSue, fully agree, humour including frequent black humour is what has often kept me sane.
As for you Jane, how did I know you would enjoy such a wonderful post, like you I also am glad that cancer is now talked about more openly. I despise the hushed tones people use when they mention the “C” word.
The more we can discuss things like cancer openly and honestly, the better peoples understanding of what it truely means will be.
As for myself, I can honestly say that cancer has not changed me from the cantankerous, flippant, bossy, investigative and nosr thumbing to authority old c*w that I have always been :)).
Rgrds/Siggy
!!! I went to the link for this movie and I find it an insulting and patronising piece of drivel. Each to their own but I don’t need this ****ing disease to make me appreciate my life or to teach me a lesson!!! I was so angered and insulted by this thing that I could happily punch whoever created it. “Cancer is a journey”??? What dimwit came up with that??? I want to go in the opposite direction thank you very much!! Do people engage their brains before they come up with pap like this??
It’s reassuring that there are other people who are really p**d off by this stupid, stupid piece of film!!
Survivor Movie I don’t do schmaltz but I have always agreed with the movie’s opening line - “I have cancer, cancer does not have me”…it sums up how I view my illness. I don’t however have affinity with the movie in it’s entirety.
Love Twinkle xoxo
another long rant Hi all
I have to agree
I feel that, because I have had BC twice, folk seem to think I need to read stuff like this and the 'woman walking around the world’ has anyone been sent that one? I have to admit the film did make me weep, but it was a bit patronizing to say the least.
It makes me so angry that folk who have never been touched by cancer in any form seem to think you’ll feel better if were sent stuff like this in our emails – err no! or, worst still, the fact that someone feels they have to tell you so and so has or has had cancer ¦… and, oh, they’re dead! Thanks, I don’t really need to know.
I posted something similar to this in ‘after treatment has finished’ it was a thread going mad about ‘BC awareness month’. This I don’t have a problem with, however, I do when im expected to put my hand in my pocket or go to a ‘fundraiser’ just because I have had BC! It seems all eyes are on me to ‘check out’ my reaction or something or that, because I have had BC, I ought to attend such things! Err, I will, in my own time, so you go and enjoy the event!
I am a registered fundraiser with Breakthrough and have launched my own BC support group so I have no issue with supporting charities.
Cancer is a word that sends shivers down anyone’s backs and those of us who have been affected or DX’d with it know that well enough. I have taken this ‘journey’ with enough members of my own family let alone my own. And its one I would rather not have to go on.
So, to Joe Public ¦
Don’t patronize me ¦ im human.
Don’t tell me how to feel ¦ it will be some advice you will live to regret
Don’t tell me ‘im lucky to be alive’ ¦ you wont survive the comment
Don’t tell me to ‘readjust my priorities’ ¦ no comment
Please, don’t stare at me ¦ I take offence and might stare back.
Accept me for who I am. I know my own mind, I can laugh at my situation (to coin a phrase on here somewhere) ‘tumor humor’ is my friend at the mo’ and, if I am able to and in the right frame of mind to; I will laugh at my situation. And I know I’m safe to do so on this website.
RANT OVER !!!
Hope I’ve not offended anyone on here !
Loadsa luv to one an all xxxxxxxxxxxx
have u seen? miriamengelberg.com/comics_mainpg.htm
these comic strips are written by someone with bc - sadly though Miriam died a few weeks ago.
She put all her comic strips into a book which I thoroughly enjoy. She has written one about being a ‘survivor’ which is funny - she agrees with what is being said here. Her website will give you a taster.
xoxo
Hi Twinkle I thought of Miriam to after reading some of the replies here. Her comic strips are funny…and so true…I think others will find them well worth looking up.
x
I am no hero Hi Rachael
No, the rant was not too long. Only just logged on to it, but must say I agree with most things you say. I think generally these stories about all these ‘brave’ women ‘fighting the fight’ don’t do the majority of women no favours at all.
Yes, it is good to be positive, and might get you through the day, but the reality for most of us is more likely to be a long hard ‘slog’ of appointments, tests, coping with family/, coping with our own emotions etc. How this can make you stronger, I don’t know. Also, if your life was far from perfect before, cancer is not suddently going to make it better!!
All I can say from personal experience, is that I hated all of it and I am not a very patient person. All that waiting for test results, sitting around in oncology departments, more tests drove me mad at times, not forgetting the pain, discomfort etc.
Yes, it has made me appreciate my true friends more, but I have also lost friends, who just could not cope with all this - I have had a recurrence - and some people just don’t know what to say. Even the girls at my support group find it difficult, as I must have been their worst nightmare justing ‘walking into the door’, when I first joined…
All I can honestly sayis, that I try and cope as best I can, try and stay active and enjoy life as much as is still possible (with restrictions brought on by lymphoedema), but it most certainly ahs not made me a better person.
That’s my rant over with.
Love and hugs
Birgit,