Hi Was moved to post after reading Alma's question about survival rates for stage IV cancer spread to lungs. It's one of the things i did once i'd been diagnosed - look at survival rates for my particluar situation. Then almost immediatley i wished i hadn't!

I managed to scare the hell out of myself looking at stats online! i was diagnosed with breast cancer metasized in the bone last summer and after not getting much info at the hospital was morbidly looking into survival rates on various websites.   the 'average' life expectancy from diagnosis was generally given as 2-3 years. As someone who was otherwise fit and healthy (ish!) and in my 30s, it was devastating to read this. My doctors hadn't given me any indication of how serious it was just said oh they had patients that were still around 15 years after diagnosis, although admittedly they were few and far between. My whole world was turned upside down- my time frame for survival seemed to be anything from 2-15 years. I spent a long time trying to make sense of this and work out where i fitted on that particular timescale. Although my oncologist could offer a few words of encouragment he was unwilling or unable to give me much of a steer as to what to expect or hope for.

My way of thinking, after speaking to him,  was that i should go ahead and renew my passport ( hopefully i could fit in a few years more of travelling) but could probably cancel my pension plan (and stop buying expensive anti-wrinkle creams!).

What did jump out at me when reading up on the subject was how important it is to remember that you are unique, every situation is different, your cancer is as individual as you are and your life expectancy is influenced by a huge number of factors -no-one can say for sure what your particular outcome will be. Doctors are generally unwilling to pluck a figure out of the air when asked the question "what can i expect, how long have i got" , which is why you resort to digging up any statitics you can find to hand and generally these stats give a rough idea but can often be unhelpful (read:terrifying!).

The amazing Maggie Keswick Jenks (who helped set up the maggie's cancer caring centres here in scotland) wrote in her pamphlet "View from the frontline" about the scientist Stephen Jay Gould and the rare cancer he developed in his thirties. Literature described it as incurable, with a median mortality of eight months after diagnosis. As a scientist however he said he quickly realised that "median didn't have to mean me" and that  knowledge was power. A graph of cancer survival rates tends to follow the shape of a bell curve and once  he counted up the reasons why he was unlikely to be at the highpoint of the curve he stopped panicking: his chances, as a young, well-educated scientist with a strong will to live were, he reasoned, much better than the median. Mentally he began to push himself down the bell-curve and along into the tail. That's what we all have to do - every little thing, be it positive thinking or diet, conventional treatment or alternative therapies - whatever it takes to push us just that little bit further along the tail of that bell curve! That's what i am doing - edging myself further away from that paltry 2 years and ever closer to that magical 15 year mark, little by little, day by day.