Remembering Ruby shared on Twitter/X

“Why does cancer evoke so much talk of conflict?

Ruby was a lover not a fighter.

A dyed in the wool pacifist who avoided all forms of conflict. She was the child in the kindergarten playground trying to broker a peace-deal between friends who had fallen out.
1/n

Being diagnosed with cancer means you are recast as a warrior, whether you like it or not.
This doesn’t happen with other medical conditions. We don’t talk about battling heart disease or a broken leg.
2/n

When Ruby was diagnosed with cancer, well meaning friends told me she was tough. A fighter. That she was going to be okay.
She really wasn’t a fighter. But she was determined to live.
And she did everything the doctors told her to, to give her the best chance of this.
3/n

Louise Dillon, whose son Fred died of cancer the same month as Ruby, wrote

‘There is a reason we don’t send children to war. If cancer is a battle, it is one that nobody volunteered for, that no one understands and everyone would run away from if they could.’
4/n

If Ruby had ever faced conscription she would without doubt have been a conscientious objector.

But as oncologist Mark Lewis says, when it comes to cancer: ‘There is no conscientious objection here. Malignancy turns lambs to lions and then slaughters them anyway.’
5/n

Saying that people lost their battle with cancer suggests that, had they tried harder, they might have survived.
But Ruby and Fred didn’t die of cancer because they didn’t try hard enough.
They died because we haven’t yet found a treatment that will cure them.
/ends

PS – Fred should have been turning 18 next week.
His friends and family are asking people to donate the cost of a birthday drink to childhood cancer research.
So that more effective treatments can be found to save children and teenagers like Fred and Ruby.
Further information.

Thread unroll link.”

Source: Remembering Ruby/X

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