Optimist, pessimist, internetist: which ear is listening?

When it comes to a reality check on cancer, doctors can’t or won’t tell you what is happening. You have to search for it. Recently, I’ve been researching my medical situation.  My oncologist is very positive and says things like, ‘We hope you will be around for many more years’.  My surgeon takes another view. He says, “You’ve lived 13 years with cancer, you should have been dead in six’.  There’s only one place to go, the internet.  There you can find the statistics and also become fatally confused.

One way to find out what stage of cancer you have is to look at websites and then check with your oncologist. I checked on the internet and then with her. I’m at stage 4, but she’s treating it like stage 3C, operative.

If you’re an optimist, the statistic that only 20% of the population with stage 4 cancer live for five years, will make you happy, assured that you are one of the 20%.  So you look a bit further.  What about people who have stage 3C or 4 who receive taxols and Avastin (a new drug which is delivered like chemo, but is not chemo)? People who take these drugs, and I’m one of them, get another few months.  If you’re an optimist you’re thinking,’ great, maybe I’ll defy the stats and have four more months’’.  And I take Amimidex –another month?

So it’s back to checking with the doctors.  If you think you’re going to get an answer like, ‘the chances are you’ll not be here in four months time,’ then  forget it.

I’ve been told that the doctors in the USA are more pessimistic than the UK.  I don’t believe it.  I chose my oncologist because she’s positive.  She goes for the strongest treatment available and hopes for the best.  I have to say though, that she’s not as positive as she used to be, but she sticks with the program.

According to some  stats then, I’m dead. Yet I still have to cope with today.  My  positive self directs that I have blueberries for breakfast, chard for lunch and salmon for dinner. I might need that extra fifteen minutes  they promise to  tack on at the end of life.   In the UK at this point, we make a cup of tea. But what kind of tea would I make? Mistletoe which might increase my life span by 5 minutes, or should I try green tea, 14 minutes. Oh what the hell, I’ll just have a double espresso. I turn off the computer, listen to something stupid like Dolly Parton and make   ‘builders’ tea’.  (Regular tea in UK with milk and sugar)  Another great day!

Optimistic, pessimistic or internetic; doctors speak to you and then you log on.  Where is reality?  I think you find out more about yourself than your condition.

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”  Philip K. Dick