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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/06/rachael-bland-battle-cancer-bbc-presenter
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| Rachael Bland was courageous. She was not a defeated warrior | Rachael Bland was courageous. She was not a defeated warrior |
| (3 months later) | |
| Rachael Bland died yesterday. The 40-year-old Radio 5 Live broadcaster’s life came to an end because she had triple-negative breast cancer – one of the toughest forms of the disease to treat. Her employer, the BBC, first announced her death on its news website by telling readers that she had “lost her battle with cancer”. Mail Online and countless others also reported on the battle, with some ringing the changes to suggest she had lost her fight. | Rachael Bland died yesterday. The 40-year-old Radio 5 Live broadcaster’s life came to an end because she had triple-negative breast cancer – one of the toughest forms of the disease to treat. Her employer, the BBC, first announced her death on its news website by telling readers that she had “lost her battle with cancer”. Mail Online and countless others also reported on the battle, with some ringing the changes to suggest she had lost her fight. |
| Thankfully, the Guardian reported simply that she had died after transforming the conversation around the illness. But if anything still needs changing it’s the notion that having cancer is a battle, as if those who die are losers, while people such as me – still thankfully alive a few years after treatment – are triumphant. It suggests that people such as Rachael were somehow not up to the task of dealing with her illness – a defeated soldier if you like, unlike those of us still trudging across the cancer war zone, scarred physically by surgery and the taking of powerful drugs, and scarred emotionally by the fact we’ve had an illness that could yet come back and kill us. | Thankfully, the Guardian reported simply that she had died after transforming the conversation around the illness. But if anything still needs changing it’s the notion that having cancer is a battle, as if those who die are losers, while people such as me – still thankfully alive a few years after treatment – are triumphant. It suggests that people such as Rachael were somehow not up to the task of dealing with her illness – a defeated soldier if you like, unlike those of us still trudging across the cancer war zone, scarred physically by surgery and the taking of powerful drugs, and scarred emotionally by the fact we’ve had an illness that could yet come back and kill us. |
| Any obituary of Rachael Bland makes it abundantly clear that this was hardly a woman who was a loser. From the moment she was first diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, in 2016, she set about using her journalistic skills to first write a blog and later produce a highly popular podcast, You, Me and the Big C, about living a full life with cancer, even when you know you have little time left and your death will leave your three-year-old child motherless. Rachael Bland mustered courage and energy to try to make the lives of other cancer sufferers easier by making the illness more talked about. | Any obituary of Rachael Bland makes it abundantly clear that this was hardly a woman who was a loser. From the moment she was first diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, in 2016, she set about using her journalistic skills to first write a blog and later produce a highly popular podcast, You, Me and the Big C, about living a full life with cancer, even when you know you have little time left and your death will leave your three-year-old child motherless. Rachael Bland mustered courage and energy to try to make the lives of other cancer sufferers easier by making the illness more talked about. |
| And for many cancer sufferers, it is a difficult, frightening time. Many of them will present a stoical front to the world but they are also vulnerable. Chemotherapy units, thanks to the staff, and to friends and to relatives who support patients, are often surprisingly cheerful places, but from time to time one does see tears shed, as people contemplate that their future can no longer be taken for granted. Or they just feel ghastly because of their treatment. | And for many cancer sufferers, it is a difficult, frightening time. Many of them will present a stoical front to the world but they are also vulnerable. Chemotherapy units, thanks to the staff, and to friends and to relatives who support patients, are often surprisingly cheerful places, but from time to time one does see tears shed, as people contemplate that their future can no longer be taken for granted. Or they just feel ghastly because of their treatment. |
| The lazy metaphors don’t help. Yesterday, on the day Rachael died, the story of two other women with cancer was reported. The two, Caroline Watts and Joanne Myatt, have been friends for many years and were both diagnosed with breast cancer when in their 30s; and after treatment, both fared well. But now they both have incurable secondary cancer. Watts is being treated and kept stable with innovative drugs, while an NHS policy quirk means Myatt is not able to undergo the same treatment. The devastation experienced because the cancer came back, and the frustration about one of them not getting effective treatment, is difficult enough. But, as Watts said: “The way people describe cancer as a battle makes you feel like a loser when it comes back, when in reality your treatment either works or it doesn’t. It’s not a matter of how hard you fight.” | The lazy metaphors don’t help. Yesterday, on the day Rachael died, the story of two other women with cancer was reported. The two, Caroline Watts and Joanne Myatt, have been friends for many years and were both diagnosed with breast cancer when in their 30s; and after treatment, both fared well. But now they both have incurable secondary cancer. Watts is being treated and kept stable with innovative drugs, while an NHS policy quirk means Myatt is not able to undergo the same treatment. The devastation experienced because the cancer came back, and the frustration about one of them not getting effective treatment, is difficult enough. But, as Watts said: “The way people describe cancer as a battle makes you feel like a loser when it comes back, when in reality your treatment either works or it doesn’t. It’s not a matter of how hard you fight.” |
| Metaphors are often used to cover up other words considered too harsh or too blunt. That’s apparent with the euphemisms used for death: passed on, passed away, gone to a better place. The charity Independent Age has launched a campaign to encourage people to speak frankly about dying and avoid the cliches. Rachael Bland did so through her podcasts. Now she has died, not because she fought a battle nor lost it, but because she had a terminal illness. And she also had tremendous guts, as a journalist, woman and mother, not as a failed warrior on a battlefield. | Metaphors are often used to cover up other words considered too harsh or too blunt. That’s apparent with the euphemisms used for death: passed on, passed away, gone to a better place. The charity Independent Age has launched a campaign to encourage people to speak frankly about dying and avoid the cliches. Rachael Bland did so through her podcasts. Now she has died, not because she fought a battle nor lost it, but because she had a terminal illness. And she also had tremendous guts, as a journalist, woman and mother, not as a failed warrior on a battlefield. |
| • Catherine Pepinster is an author and journalist | • Catherine Pepinster is an author and journalist |
| How Rachael Bland and You, Me & the Big C transformed the conversation around cancer | |
| Cancer | Cancer |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Health | Health |
| Death and dying | Death and dying |
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