If I hear the phrase 'in your condition', one more time, I am going to really going to scream. I have been meeting headhunters and outplacement professionals over the past three days, and all of them - bar one - have taken the tack of "in your condition, do you want the stress of full time work?", or "given your condition, perhaps you should lower your expectations", or "can you really take the stress of running your own business"?

Cancer chauvinism. That is what this is. Just because I have cancer, I have been put in a box, put out to pasture. I am past it. Oh, you're above 45? Yes, well, perhaps perhaps project work is better for you. I bet I could outrun any of these people. Yet, they want to hold me down and back.

Let me make this very clear - there is absolutely no clinical link between stress and cancer. And there is also such a thing as 'good' stress. To tells cancer survivors that we should not be under any stress is the same thing as telling to crawl away and live in the shadows of life.

This is ignorance, and prejudicial, and it is detrimental. Just because one has cancer, society collaborates to make you economically non-viable. I could point to any number of cancer survivors who gone on to prosper after their treatment to run viable, thriving businesses, and who have risen in the corporate ranks. Our own Prime Minister is a cancer survivor after having b een diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. People see him as the miracle story. Actually, given the advances in medical science, his story is today the norm rather than the exception. The story of cancer is one that is liberally dotted with miracles.

This is a fact. It has been known for some time. Why is it then that people still do not get it and insist on behaving as though a cancer diagnosis is the same thing as being dead, or a shadow of one's former self? And, having survived the treatment, why do people insist on taking away this victory from us?

I know of several cancer survivors who have had their jobs 'removed' while they were going through treatment. I know too of one who is an 11-year survivor who is still not covered by company medical insurance and has not had a raise in 11 years.

Cancer chauvinism. Society needs to be told that the cancer journey is not about death, and that it is not about diminishing a person. More often than not, it is about growth, and a second chance, of people who emerge more self-aware, and more willing to contribute. The real tragedy is a society that pats itself on the shoulder for it's 'sympathetic approach' to cancer is in fact engaging in a thinly veiled form of discrimination.

Some said to me the other day that the physically challenged are better looked after than cancer survivors. There are social campaigns to put them in jobs, they have their own designated parking lots, their own loos. We are aware of the plight of the physically challenged and willingly support them. Cancer survivors do not. If we are so weak, do we not need to park closer to the building entrance? If we are so debilitated, do we not deserve our own loos to throw up in, or loos with grab bars all over the place when we have those dizzy spells? Why are there not 'recovery rooms' in buildings, with aromatherapy burners, for cancer survivors to sit in to relieve the stress of walking from point A to B in a mall?

Why are there no such considerations for cancer patients? Thirty percent of the population has cancer and this group is growing. Why is it that the rights of this group is so poorly looked after?

Perhaps it is because there is no vocal outcry about the plight of cancer survivors. Or - more to the point - perhaps it is because we do not feel we need it. We are able to re-enter the fabric of mainstream life without the big C burned into our foreheads. No-one need know because we look like everyone else, once our hair begins to grow. We are functioning, contributing members of society. And perhaps it is because most cancer survivors are so aware of the discimination that having emerged from treatment, we prefer not to draw attention to our survivorship.

Come one. Let's put an end to this reverse discrimination and give cancer survivors the chance to survive to the fullest extent of their capabilities. Ask what these are, instead of assuming that we all have one foot in the grave. And believe us without discrimination-disguised-as-sympathy.

The treatment is finite and short term. But survival...with the fair and true support of society, this could last a lifetime.