After a Diagnosis, Wishing for a Magic Number

After a Diagnosis, Wishing for a Magic Number

When my wife, Ruth, learned she had breast cancer, friends told us not to worry. After all, they said, a lot of progress has been made
As a cancer researcher and a doctor at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where she was being treated, I knew this was true. Progress has indeed been made. Throughout my career, death rates from breast cancer in the United States have steadily declined by 1 percent to 2 percent a year.

Some experts credit mammography screening for up to half the decline; others credit it less, or not at all. But there is no dispute that much of the progress has come through better treatments for early-stage breast cancer. Chemotherapy has improved, radiation has grown more effective and additional drugs lower the risk that the cancer will come back.

All of this progress meant that the chance that Ruth’s breast cancer would come back was a lot lower than it might have been years ago. But what was that chance, anyway? It was the obvious question, and we put it to her oncologist at our first appointment with him. He paused and then offered a peculiar answer. He said we should realize that it didn’t matter. It would either happen or it wouldn’t.
reads more : http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/after-a-diagnosis-wishing-for-a-magic-number/#more-49113

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