Spirit of the Blitz and such

This is a difficult one because

a) people do not know what to say and

b) it is so much better to say the wrong thing than simply "disappear" from the life of your cancerous friend which is pathetic and cowardly -

but .... someone told me last night that I am " a fighter".

Well, yes admittedly I have always been feisty and opinionated, many times to my detriment I might add.

He then added " a spirit of determination can make all the difference to cancer prognosis".

I have to say that this is

a) unproven by any reliable research and

b) bloody insulting to the positive, brave, everything-to-live-for women who have died of this disease.

My friend Diane, whose packed funeral I attended last Friday, was brave and stoical and she endured 7 years of treatment for breast cancer. No one can ever say that she was not determined or didn't try hard enough to "fight it" but the truth is, mental attitude is irrelevant.

A third to a half of the population of England and Wales died of bubonic plague in the mid-fourteenth century. Did the survivors have an uncommonly brave and positive mental attitude, or was it just chance?

We have all known lifelong whingeing miserable hypochondriacs who lived into their 90s, and spirited "determined" women who have died in the prime of their lives of breast cancer, sometimes leaving young children.

OK so I'm not drinking wine through a straw continually and I am doing weight bearing exercise and drinking lots of water (not from plastic bottles because that's bad for you) and I ate 17 brazil nuts and 3 dried figs in the car between jobs today and I have at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day oh yes, but for all I know it's pissing in the wind.

The "woman of courage" rose in my garden has two full blooms today. I'm thinking of all the truly courageous women who have died despite their will to live, and don't let anyone tell me it was because they weren't determined enough.