Oct
21
A big thank-you to everyone who weighed in & commented on the ‘23% chance of survival’ issue – I loved the story of a 9-years-and-counting survivor of Stage 4 HER-2 positive cancer on the Tell Her-2 website (thank-you Carol!) and had a few more amusing e-mails from friends, like the one suggesting that 23% of people are just talking out of their @$$es.
But this comment from Pam was the icing on the cake, the cherry on top, la piece de resistance:
“I think the study that was referred to in the Ottawa Citizen was this one:
http://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/news-releases/2008/early-stage-her2-positive-breast-cancer-patients-at-increased-risk-of-recurrence.html
It’s important to note that they refer to a 23% rate of recurrence for HER2 positive breast cancers NOT a 23% survival rate. Hope this helps!”
Oh it helps, Pam! Enormously, massively. Curtains for all but 23% of us? Totally scary. But a 23% chance of recurrence? Pfffft – whatevs, already living it.
The study’s statistics on recurrence and survival rates for HER-2+ vs. other kinds of breast cancers indicated what I already knew; that it’s not quite as rosy for us HER-2 types. But it sure as heck isn’t as grim as a 23% vs. 90% chance of survival:
“In those analyzed with HER2 positive tumors, the five-year, recurrence-free survival was 77.1 percent; in contrast, HER2 negative patients’ recurrence-free survival was 93.7 percent. Five-year distant recurrence-free survival was 86.4 percent in women with HER2 positive tumors compared to 97.2 percent in women with HER2-negative tumors.”
I hereby apologize to the authors of the study for calling you hacks. I was a little upset at the time. I still remain steadfastly suspicious of all statistics, but I now realize you nice Texans were actually just trying to get women with early-stage HER-2+ cancer access to Herceptin, and I wish you every success in that noble pursuit.
There remains the issue of just how grossly irresponsible the Ottawa Citizen article was. I’m trying to imagine myself as that writer, on deadline, trying to put together a positive piece about a new service for people with some kind of breast cancer that I’ve never really heard of, and oh! Look, here’s a study! Let me see, should I report that there is a 23% chance that HER-2+ cancers are going to come back? Orrrr, hang on a minute, maybe if I just warp it beyond all recognition to say that only 23% of these people with HER-2+ cancer will live, that would be better. Recurrence is just so, I don’t know… vague and neutral. Death is so much stronger. Yep, I think I’ll just go with death. Great, all done! And I still have time for lunch.
Rather alarming. Rest assured my letter to the Citizen to requesting a correction is already underway. Thanks everyone for getting me through this darkness and out to the light at the end of the tunnel of incorrectly reported stats. That’ll learn me to pay attention to numbers. I’ll stick to words from now on, they’re so much more reliable. Can’t put a number to hope and courage and chutzpah, can you? I rest my case.
You know what I usually do when something really upsets me? I usually sit down on my kitchen floor and cry. It’s not the most comfortable place to cry (that would be my husband’s arms) but I often end up there. I seem to have a need to get low to the ground. Get terra firma (or kitchen tile) under me so I don’t wobble and break like a teacup.
I tell you this because I recently spent some time on my kitchen floor, right after reading this story in the Ottawa Citizen, which talks about a new program for young women with HER-2 positive breast cancer. “Sounds great,” I thought. “Maybe I’ll get involved,” thought I.
And there, smack in the middle of the article was this line:
“…it’s easy to see why HER2 is so feared: In a study last year at the University of Texas, women with early stage HER2-positive tumours were reported to have a 23-per-cent survival rate, compared with 90 per cent for breast cancer patients who do not test positive for the protein.”
Plop – straight to the floor. Tears (big fat ones) and terror (also robust) ensued. How dare they? How dare they just hit me with that 23% when I really and truly believed that I would beat this? Believed it to the point that I publicly chastised anyone who didn’t believe it. I more than believed it – I was full of conviction; I knew I would beat it. And then, one little line in one little article sends me to the kitchen floor, my conviction shattered and my mascara all over the place??
Yes, actually. That’s all it took. Suddenly I was aware that my steely resolve and hell-bent determination are a little more fragile than I realized.
Slowly, the fatso tears became little spatters and then stopped altogether and reason – or my version of it — took over. I concluded that deeming the University of Texas researchers a bunch of hacks was appropriate. As was feeling very unkindly toward the reporter who included that line in her story. Thanks a lot, stupid no-cancer-having lady, for your blithe reference to these death stats concerning something I have to live with every day. Why don’t you go back to writing about five great picnic spots in our nation’s capital and leave me to my shattered optimism.
There – being nasty made me feel better already. Next I went into action mode, pouring myself a nice big glass of wine and Googling all the statistics for various kinds of death, thinking surely it’s harder to survive car accidents and parasitic infections?
That’s when I found a story about that crocodile hunter guy. Yes, the crocodile hunter guy. I know this sounds completely irrelevant, but stay with me: There he was, Steve Irwin, cheerfully bounding around swamps and wrestling dangerous reptiles one day – then suddenly pierced through the ticker by a normally gentle sea creature the next. He didn’t know what was going to happen to him when he went into the reef that day. He probably had fewer reservations about swimming with those big portobello mushrooms than he would ever have had about hanging out in croc-infested swamps – and you can bet the stats for crocodile deaths are much higher than for death-by-sting-ray.
Which is when I realized that statistics are for morons. In reality, you can never know when or how you’ll die, you can only choose how you’ll live. Some people wrestle reptiles, some wrestle cancer. In the end, the obvious danger may not be the thing that strikes you down. After all, that’s why I still wear a bicycle helmet.
So, thank-you dearly departed crocodile guy – I bet you never thought you’d come to the rescue of a Canadian girl with HER-2 positive cancer. Life is full of surprises, and stupid statistics abound, but I am going to live. This cancer is not going to win. I knew I cracked open the Australian wine for a reason.
