In the medical world, the word survivor refers to anyone who is diagnosed with cancer and is still alive, even if they're still receiving treatment.
Yet some patients take offense at this word, feeling that they aren't a survivor until they have hit that magic five-year mark after treatment has ended. Others, by the mere fact of having been diagnosed in the first place, consider themselves victims of the disease for life.
We don't want to call someone a patient if their treatment is completed and, we hope, they are no longer functioning like one. I would like to see us create a new vocabulary that represents who we really are when we've beaten this disease. If we don't want to use the word survivor, what word would you prefer?
Here are some that occur to me:
- Thrivers
- Flourishers
- Amazing Breast-Cancer Women
- Wild Breast-Cancer Women (someone once gave me a pin with this message — I'm not sure what it means but I suspect this person saw me in that light)
- Warriors (one woman told me she was a breast-cancer soldier)
At breast cancer events, where we tend to celebrate the survivors, I often feel guilty, as if we're neglecting those who didn't get to be survivors. It certainly isn't because they didn't try. It just wasn't their fate. (Are we Fate Overcomers?)
What do you think we should call those of us who have been diagnosed and have completed treatment?
