Things Not To Say to Someone With Cancer
“If you’re going to get cancer, it’s one of the best to get.”
“Is it all working down there?”
“Oh you’re such an inspiration!”
“You’re so brave!”
“You don’t look like you’ve got cancer.”
“Where’s your hair?
Why have you got hair?
Didn’t you have chemo?”
When I took time off work, there was one person who actively went around denying that I had
cancer.
Yeah I did have chemo.
But not every chemo makes you lose your hair.
Oh my God!
“Look at him, he doesn’t have cancer.
I don’t know why he’s making that up for attention?”
“Oh I know someone who had that.”
One person came up to me and they said, “Oh my uncle had that.”
There was a sort of silence and they just went, “Yeah, he died.”
And they’ll tell me this whole entire story about how they had cancer, how they beat it,
how they were doing really, really well…
And I’ll be like, “And how are they doing now?”
“Oh they died two years ago.”
I probably got one success story that I heard out of a hundred, “Oh yeah, yeah she died.”
Oh my God!
“How long do you have left?”
You can be diagnosed with the exact same stage and grade as Jim-Bob next door, who’s the
same age as you, similar fitness and health, and yet will react to cancer treatment completely
and utterly differently.
And people kind of think, “Oh you’ve got cancer, does that mean you’re going to die?”
And actually no, most of the time, thankfully, now with all the treatment that you can have,
like most people don’t.
This is probably the worst one.
“Stay positive.”
Oh I hate those words!
People have to know you can’t be positive all the time and you will have your down days.
A lot of people were saying to me like, “Yeah you’ve lost the ability to carry a child,
but there’s so many other ways.
You can have a surrogate and you can adopt…”
Yeah, but I didn’t want - that wasn’t my life.
“You’re so brave.”
Well I’m not brave because the alternative is dying.
Just dealt with what was thrown in my direction.
Feel pressure to be an inspiration.
Oh God, I’ve got to go raise all this money now.
Someone had cancer and lost a limb but now they’re running 500 miles in 3 days and
they’ve raised £10 million for charity so it’s like, “You can do that too!”
But when you’re feeling tired in a hospital bed and you’re being shown pictures of these
amazing stories of people that are so much more incredible than you then that is not
at all motivating.
The amount of times that I missed out on events, on celebrations, on birthdays, on a couple
of weddings, because the person whose event or wedding or birthday it was, thought that
I was too ill to attend.
This came via another friend, and they had this party, and they said, “Where’s Anthony?
Why isn’t he invited?”
Because I was normally there.
And the person said, “Oh I didn’t invite him, I thought he’d bring the mood down.”
And there’s people who want to have a friend with cancer.
Yeah.
Those are weird people.
Came just to show people that they’re helping.
That they’re helping, yeah.
It’s attention isn’t it?
It’s totally…
It’s like, I’ll just latch on to you and your horrific disease because that means I
get to be seen as the person who cares.
“Oh, so you’re all better now.”
It really annoys me because there’s a lot of things that people don’t realise.
Like, emotionally, I’m struggling.
Although it’s amazing news, and personally I jumped out of the chair screaming with delight,
but it’s the last however many months or years of treatment has taken a complete and
utter toll, not only on you physically but mentally.
You have to be monitored for years afterwards and you still feel paranoid.
As soon as a niggle comes up or a little lump or anything, I’m just kind of like...
You think, here we go again.
Like now every time…
Like, I got my period this week which they said I might never get a period again.
Wahey!
Yay to being a woman!
I never thought I’d be happy about getting a period but I was very happy.
But yeah I was like, “Oh no.
I’m bleeding.
Has it come back?”
What should you say?
Oh I tell you what that’s harder than all of them put together.
Most of the things that we’ve discussed…
It’s like sometimes you can tell someone they’re brave and that will feel good.
You can tell them to be positive and that will get a great response.
It’s just about choosing your moment.
Saying nothing is also good.
Sometimes it’s just cool to have someone there to watch some TV with you.
Just being able to go out for tea or just go around to your friend’s house and just
be normal, sit and watch the telly.
The amount of support and love that came sort of flooding in, it is overwhelming isn’t
it?
It almost makes me feel emotional thinking about it.
And then you think, it’s not a pressure, but it suddenly makes you wake up and you
think, you know what?
I’m someone’s daughter, I’m someone’s granddaughter and you just think, I’ll do
what I need to do.