Young Adults with Cancer: Why 'War' Analogies Work But 'Warrior' Analogies Do Not

Many, many people don't like war analogies when it comes to cancer,  especially those of us who've been afflicted by it. We often hear that a comrade has lost or won his or her battle with cancer. Or about society declaring war on cancer. Or about someone fighting bravely against the disease.

Sure, this language of war is cliche, giving us a picture of the brave warrior fighting to the death against cancer. And those killed in the line of fire are our warrior-heroes, while the victors are extolled much like the soldiers of old news reels -- with hero-istic glory.

Yet, when it comes to those afflicted with cancer young, like it or not, war analogies do work.

I'm not talking about the romanticized cliche of the battle-mongering warrior, but about real war.

Real. War.

Not. Reel. War.

As someone who was diagnosed with breast cancer young, here are just some of the ways I have found having cancer being like fighting a war. As in war, people with cancer can die young, in their prime of life -- often leaving behind children, spouses/significant others, and parents.

I've seen a few friends cut down young before my very eyes. Their children attended their mommies' funerals.

As in war, cancer is unpredictable and random, an unseen enemy killing young friends and leaving others to survive in the wake of survivor's guilt and PTSD. Like war, cancer is a confusing hodge-podge of harrowing events, physical and emotional anguish, with the ever-looming possibility of death.

I first realized this cancer = war analogy when reading Tim O'Brien's novel The Things They Carried, a haunting piece about the Vietnam War that seems to be part memoir. O'Brien is a Vietnam War veteran.

My book club decided on this book, and I was excited to be reading it. And, as expected, it did not disappoint, for it is outstanding. Unexpectedly, however, the book caused me to cry a lot. I couldn't understand why it resonated with me on such a deep level. How could I relate to these young soldiers -- some who lived and some who died -- all of whom shared the physical and psychological upheaval that war causes? I cried because of what these soldiers went through -- an unromanticized experience of war.

But I also sobbed because the book caused me to have flashbacks about my friends who died young, leaving behind children and spouses and parents. The book reminded me how fragile life is, especially when one is in a war zone. The novel made me realize how difficult it has been for me to decipher what happened to me and acknowledge PTSD and survivor's guilt as just one part of the cancer experience. Like the war depicted in O'Brien's masterpiece, cancer is also ugly.

There's my favorite chapter, "Speaking of Courage," where a Vietnam veteran survivor drives continuously around a lake, trying to sort out the trauma he experienced and wondering how he could find the right language to tell his loved ones what he had been through. 

I've been there, done that. Though in my case, it didn't involve driving around a lake.

And the chapter "How to Tell a True War Story" has true words about war, hauntingly related to the actual warlike experience of fighting cancer young:

"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior. ... If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. ... you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."

This passage is a far cry from various cancer-related organizations' uplifting "cancer warrior" images, another "terrible lie."

And one more quote from the book's first chapter "The Things They Carried": "Now and then ... there were times of panic, when [the soldiers] squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not to die."

Even though I have not been a soldier of the Vietnam War, I could relate to this fear as a young cancer patient. All we can do is cover our heads and hope that cancer doesn't kill us. All we can do is beg the world that we don't die.

That's what true war is.

Going through cancer young is about facing untimely death.

It is about watching young friends get killed right before our eyes.

It is about leaving spouses and children behind.

For those cancer "survivors," it is about PTSD and/or other psychological burdens.

It is about the shrapnel of cancer treatments, which leaves us physically diminished.

Fighting cancer -- especially fighting cancer young -- is not about being a warrior, though. The warrior is a myth. Our society loves warrior mythology because our culture feeds on victorious war stories.

Fighting cancer is a true war story: about ugliness, trauma, fear, and all the hardships that war brings about.

I'm writing a book titled Calling the Shots: Coaching Your Way Through the Medical System. Please feel free to subscribe to this blog by clicking the orange subscribe button. I am a professional writer and have published numerous academic and magazine articles, as well as an essay on my breast cancer experience in the anthology Voices of Breast Cancer by LaChance Publishing. I can be contacted at bethlgainer@gmail.com and gainercallingtheshots@gmail.com.