When you live with head and neck cancer, courage isn’t a one-off act.
It’s not a single moment of bravery under the spotlight.
It’s not a cinematic scene where you shout defiantly into the storm.
What is it then?
This is a marathon of resolve, fought daily in the shadows. This is the arena where courage has to be chronic.
Most people think of “chronic” as bad news – chronic pain, chronic illness, chronic fatigue.
But there’s another condition worth catching: chronic courage.
Chronic courage is the long-term, persistent kind of bravery that quietly gets you through the endless scans, the side effects, the surgeries, and the sleepless nights.
Head and neck cancer isn’t just a physical battle; it hijacks your voice, your swallowing, your face, and often your sense of who you are.
Eating becomes a nightmare, speaking a challenge, and socialising – once effortless – feels like a minefield. This isn’t a storm you weather once; it’s a climate you live in.
And that’s where chronic courage comes in.
Chronic courage isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce itself. It’s the quiet decision to get up and face another day when your body really doesn’t want to. It’s trying to eat when you know full well choking is guaranteed. It’s living with a crumbling jaw and still choosing to smile.
It’s the countless tiny acts of daily living that most people just take for granted.
These moments rarely make headlines, but they define survival: eating, chewing, swallowing, speaking, breathing.
Courage in bursts can get you through a single tough moment. But head and neck cancer requires relentless forward motion.
There are no days off, no neat finish line where you get to hang up your battle gear. The treatments, the check-ups, the anxiety about recurrence – they don’t clock out. Neither can you.
Chronic courage becomes your modus operandi. It’s what lets you walk into clinics with your head high, even when your body is broken. It’s what allows you to hold on to your humanity when cancer tries to strip it away.
Chronic courage doesn’t feel heroic though. Most of the time, it just feels like stubbornness. Like refusing to let cancer dictate the terms of your existence. It’s brewed in cups of tea, forged on long walks, whispered in moments of doubt.
It thrives in small victories – finishing a meal, going out in public, sharing your story. It’s in every step where you say, “Not today, cancer.”
- Chronic courage is showing up when fear wants you to stay down.
- Chronic courage is the habit of standing tall, even when you’re on your knees.
- Chronic courage is fighting the same battle every day and still finding a way forward.
- Chronic courage is refusing to let pain, doubt, or fatigue have the last word.
- Chronic courage is persistence dressed in scars.
- Chronic courage is quiet defiance that never clocks off.
- Chronic courage is ordinary people doing extraordinary things, again and again.
- Chronic courage is endurance with attitude.
If you’re suffering with head and neck cancer, you already have chronic courage – whether you realise it or not.
It’s the thing that drags you through the day, stitches you back together after setbacks (and there will be many), and keeps your chin up when it would be easier to bow out.
Chronic courage is not about being fearless. It’s about being vulnerable but carrying on anyway. It’s the rare condition that makes you harder to break, harder to silence, harder to stop.
So if anyone asks what you’re suffering from, you can tell them, you’ve got head and neck cancer and chronic courage too.
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