A Well Explained Reason for Ditching the S-Word

I hate the S-word. I am not an s-word. I am a person living with cancer. Its always just bugged me. A lot. I hate the fact that ACS designates anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer as an s-word.But finally I found someone who really explains it well as to why you should ditch the s-word. I was catching up and finally reading a copy of Readers Digest from last September and came across an article called "Don ' t Call me a Cancer Survivor" . The author is a hospital chaplain for the last three decades or so and was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005. With her diagnosis she learned a lot." One surprising thing I found was that only a small part of the cancer experience is about medicine. Most of it is about feelings, faith, losing and finding your identity, and discovering strength and flexibility you never even knew you had. It ’s about realizing that the most important things in life are not things at all, but relationships. It’s about laughing in the face of uncertainty—and learning that the way to get out of almost anything is to say “I have cancer.” "Upon her diagnosis she was instantly given pink ribbons, told about the upcoming walk, luncheons, and more. Someone actually told her that her cancer diagnosis was her ' wake up call ' . (She wanted to hit him but couldn ' t because it was right after surgery. I would have hit him for her if I was there.)She realized that being a cancer s-word was taking over her life." That ’s when I told myself, “Claim you...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: cancer diagnosis labels quality of life s-word Source Type: blogs