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The problem with the “win-lose” framing of cancer, of course, is that it suggests the patient can — by sheer force of will, with enough support — heal themselves, while a setback in treatment is, logically, a kind of failure.

Here is an excerpt from a powerful piece published in the U.K. newspaper the Guardian in 2014, from a health care worker named Kate Granger, who is being treated for terminal cancer.

” ‘She lost her brave fight.’ If anyone mutters those words after my death, wherever I am, I will curse them.

“I would like to be remembered for the positive impact I have made on the world, for fun times and for my relationships with others, not as a loser. When I do die, I will have defied the prognosis for my type of cancer and achieved a great deal with my life. I do not want to feel a failure about something beyond my control. I refuse to believe my death will be because I didn’t battle hard enough.”

Wow. Does that not say it all?

Anne Pitman, a former cancer coach, is a yoga therapist with the Ottawa Integrative Cancer Centre. She has spoken to hundreds of people facing the disease — and she likes “facing” as opposed to “fighting.”

Sometimes, she will refer to patients “wrestling” the illness.

“I have to be very careful with my wording. I would describe someone as facing cancer. I like that because there’s something about turning towards it that I think is really useful, so we are not just in the victim and hero metaphor.”

We treat cancer unlike other diseases because, however weakly, the spectre of death overhangs it. And death is not a cosy conversation, so we avoid it.