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What Word Can We Use to Describe Ourselves?

By Barbara Krauser

From The Occasional Hot Flash

This NY Times article on what people say when you have cancer and how we think about it ourselves, I found interesting.  I left it thinking about what words, other than survivor, we could use to describe ourselves.  I didn't get anywhere really. So let me know if you come up with something good. Leave comments here.

Click here to read the article.

 

Posted March 16, 2010.

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Comments

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I thought the article was, for the most part, spot on. I've always rejected this survivor/victim dichotomy, which is some endemic in American society. And I've always had problems with the warlike imagery of individuals battling cancer, the war against cancer, etc. When I was being about 10 years ago I was keenly aware and had real problems with this imagery, and couldn't help noticing the similarities between the way that persons undergoing chemotherapy and survivors of the Nazi concentration camps were depicted: gaunt bodies, no hair, etc. No one really wanted to talk about it in my support group, they just wanted to talk about getting from one day to the next, which is understandable. Nevertheless, there are many things associated with the cancer movement, for lack of a better term, that we simply don't talk about. I think it's high time this dialogue starts.

— Madeleine Tress

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 clear!