Beating, fighting, losing and surviving: all words that reflect the scene of a war zone, and coverage of Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek's death is a reminder that this language assumes cancer patients have a choice in their outcomes.
"If things work out and people do well, are they any more a hero than somebody who did everything they needed to do, but unfortunately the disease was stronger than they were?" Len Lichtenfeld, MD, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, told MarketWatch.
Researchers have long warned against this battle language, linking it to feelings of failure and guilt among cancer patients.
Words that indicate a victory, such as "won," can also give cancer patients a false perception that their course of illness is over and can create a larger let down for those who experience a recurrence after remission, reports MarketWatch.
Instead, travel-themed language offers a less dominant way to communicate about a person's cancer course: "The journey method does not countenance such concepts as winning, losing and failing. Rather, there are only different roads to travel, various avenues to explore, and, always, there are exits," Gary Reisfield, MD, and George Wilson, MD, wrote in a 2004 article published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.