Words matter. Therefore I have substituted “cancer participant” for the much more common term, “cancer survivor.” Webster’s dictionary defines survivor as: One who lives through affliction, One who outlives another. Survivor is the most common identifier for any individual who carries the diagnosis of a particular disease and is still alive. It is specifically applied in the cancer community to imply a victory over the declared enemy – the cancer cell. It also implies a certain degree of rigor and determination that a particular individual demonstrates in the cancer battle, and, consciously or subconsciously, implies that the nonsurvivors, the patients who have succumbed to their disease process, perhaps did not fight hard or long enough.