My dad asked me the other day what I do all day. My only answer was that I'm spending my days writing. I have done a lot of that recently. This post is semi-inspired by an old episode of Seventh Heaven. God love that show, where Matt has to write a paper for his statistics class on medicine and statistics.
How much do statistics really mean to your diagnosis? Does it mean that you only have a 5% chance of surviving after five years? Does it mean a social worker can get their own information and put into a court document that you are in fact dying therefore, shouldn't have custody of your children? Does it mean that your siblings are allowed to converse amongst themselves and determine that you are dying and won't see past your 40th birthday? Does it mean that that your life is over?
The only thing statistics should mean to you is that you are the ONE statistic that might change the other statistics. You might be the one person that the chemo will work on versus all the other people that it doesn't work. You might be the one person that has a successful operation that has never been performed before. Where do the numbers come from? They come from you. You are the one person! You are the one person that will have hope that you don't fall into the "normal" statistical category.
I spent hours online looking and reviewing statistics of metastatic breast cancer patients. The doctors and nurses tell you don't look at the internet. Don't look at the statistics they don't apply to you. That's a nice thought in theory, but the reality is they do apply to you. You could be the changing factor!
My breast cancer had spread into my sternum. This is the one place that chemo absolutely had to work. There is no way to truly tell if the cancer is completely gone out of the bone. My oncologist wanted me to meet with one of the top thoracic surgeons in the field. They were going to perform a sternectomy. What they would do is take out part of my sternum and then reconstruct it with bone from my clavicle and a metal plate. I tried to do research on this and guess what? There wasn't any. There weren't any case studies to read up on because it had never been done before. I'd be the first. What an incredible gift I was going to be able to give the medical community. Yes, this was awful I was going to have to go through this, but I thought about all the people I might be able to help. Once I had my double mastectomies, my breast cancer surgeon said she took too much muscle from my left breast and the new concern was where the blood supply was going to come from. After careful thought by the tumor board, I was no longer a candidate for this invasive procedure. This just goes to show I would have been that ONE statistic that could change the statistics for many others.
Why do we go onto American Cancer Society or Cancer.org? These are sites that have been provided to us as useful tools. However, these sites also focus on the statistics of survival rates. Why do we need to know what the survival rates are? Is it because a statistic is tangible?
Our family members can't hold onto it either. They need some kind of sense of this wrong that has been done to their spouse, child, sibling, or friend. They need something to focus on and try to "fix" what has been done to you. The truth is there isn't anything they can do. There isn't anything they can do to help. As helpless as they might feel, there simply isn't anything they can do.
Even if they have gone through a similar experience, their experience was theirs. Not yours. Everyone is entirely different. You may have had a metallic taste in your mouth while going through chemo, and another person may not have to go through it. You may have puked all throughout your treatment, and another person may not. You just don't know and you'll drive yourself crazy trying to prepare. Cancer is kind of like parenthood. There is no manual of instruction. You just do the best you can do and keep pluggin away as my husband would say.
Which statistic are you going to be? Are you going to be the statistic that forever changes the way we look at treatment? Are you going to be the statistic that proves a positive attitude absolutely can change the outcome of your prognosis?
What did you do when you were diagnosed with breast cancer or any kind of cancer? Did you look at the statistics? Did your family research? Please comment if you've had a similar experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment