Clichés about cancer to avoid: I'm not "brave"



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Mandy Mahoney

Legend

Mandy Mahoney, suffering from incurable bad cancer, claims not to be "brave" or "inspiring"

Fighter, warrior, hero – here are some of the terms you could use to describe people with cancer.

But according to a new survey, for some people with the disease, words are considered inappropriate rather than stimulating.

Macmillan Cancer's UK survey Supporting 2,000 cancer and cancer-reported cancer and victim victims was also among the least popular terms.

The charity said it had shown how simple descriptions of cancer could be "discordant".

According to the survey conducted by YouGov, calling the diagnosis of cancer "war" or "battle" and saying that they had "lost their fight" or "lost their fight" at their death was another unpopular description.

Articles in the media and publications on social networks have proven to be the worst offenders for the use of this language.

The survey revealed a preference for factual words to describe people with cancer, their diagnosis and the death of a person with the disease.

"I'm not a source of inspiration"

Mandy Mahoney, 47, has incurable metastatic bad cancer.

The outreach worker from London was diagnosed with bad cancer in 2011 and has since returned five times.

She said, "I think the cancer discourse can be quite cumbersome – the standard descriptors of brave, fighter, warrior and survivor put tremendous pressure on newly diagnosed people."

Mandy added that she also opposed the description of people as "losing their fight" against cancer.

"It confers that you did not fight or give up," she said.

Instead, she prefers "clear, factual language" and simply describes herself as "living with an incurable cancer".

"I'm neither brave nor inspiring, just trying to live the life I have left," she added.

Legend

Craig Toley stated that he had found words like "fight" and "struggle" to strengthen his power, but that others might feel different

However, Craig Toley, who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2016 and is now in remission, said he thought some of the most positive terms could be empowering.

The 31-year-old, who is a powerlifter in his spare time, the language such as "fight", "fight", "warrior" and "fight" will be interpreted differently by different people.

"Personally, I found that these words helped me a lot to empower myself and made me think of my cancer as a challenge that I had to face.

"Everyone loves the story of a fighter."

"Division words"

Karen Roberts, Chief Nurse at Macmillan Cancer Support, said, "These results show how simple words and descriptions can be divisive and" cooking pot ".

"Cancer puts all kinds of things on your way and strives to find the words, and the emotional turmoil caused by the misunderstanding of our friends and family only makes life even more difficult. more upset.

"By drawing attention to that, we want to encourage more people to talk about the words they prefer to hear and stop the damage that can be done to people's well-being and relationships."

Mandy said that it was not necessary for people to "swallow a textbook and find all the key phrases" to talk to someone with cancer, and it's nice not to always know what to say.

"If you tell me it's embarrbading and you do not know what to say, I'll find a way to help you, and in fact, on some occasions, I could say" we do not have to speak ".

"But just be real."

Macmillan Cancer Support has launched a campaign to highlight the challenges posed by a cancer diagnosis and available support.

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