Two million of us

There were 2,591,855 survivors of breast cancer in the US on January 1, 2007. That's according to a new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute. That's quite impressive. It comes to 22 percent more survivors since 2001 for breast cancer alone, and 20 percent for cancer overall. More and more are living with the disease, though there's living with and living with. Living with, for example, could actually mean dying. As the report states: Finally, the data do not permit specifying whether a cancer survivor is cured, in active therapy, living with a chronic cancer-related illness or disability, or dying from cancer.

Oh well. If you read the comments after the New York Times article about this, you get more food for thought. The commenters say that doctors over-test and over-diagnose, that survival isn't the be-all and end-all if you're out of work and the bank has foreclosed on your house, that toxins are still swirling about around and inside us.

I don't know what statistics would be more meaningful. You could see who has Stage 4, and count those people as soon-to-be-non-survivors, but then again some people are living with Stage 4 of various cancers. I suppose everyone is a survivor until they croak.

new york times article by long term mets survivor

if katherine russell rich can live 17 years with metastatic breast cancer, then so can i!

read her article: 17 Years Later, Stage 4 Survivor Is Savoring a Life Well Lived

2009-2010 breast cancer stats

according to the american cancer society's publication, Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2009-2010, in a chart on page 9, 24.7% of white patients with metastatic disease will live five years.

i have already outlived these stats, and the ones i was given in 2002 when re-diagnsoed with mets.

the same brochure also gives more information about survival rates on page 29:

Five-year survival statistics are based on cancer patients diagnosed between 1999-2005, 10-year survival rates are based on diagnoses between 1995-2005, and 15-year survival rates are based on diag- noses between 1989-2005. All patients were followed through 2006. Relative survival rates are used to adjust for normal life expectancy (and events such as death from heart disease, accidents, and diseases of old age). Relative survival is calculated by dividing the percent- age of observed 5-year survival for cancer patients by the 5-year survival expected for people in the general population who are similar to the patient group with respect to age, sex, race, and calendar year of obser- vation. Relative survival rates are not calculated for Hispanics/Latinos, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders, and American Indians/Alaska Natives because reliable estimates of normal life expectancy are not available for these groups. Therefore, cause-specific survival rates are presented. Cause-specific survival rates are the probability of not dying of breast cancer within 5 years after diagnosis. Cause-specific survival does not account for stage and age at diagnosis. When referenced as such, 5-year survival statistics were originally published in SEER Cancer Statistics Review, 1975-2006.

Horner MJ, Ries LAG, Krapcho M, et al., eds. SEER Cancer Statistics Review, 1975-2006. National Cancer Institute. Bethesda, MD, http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2006/, based on November 2008 SEER data submission, posted to the SEER web site, 2009.

it's a lot of medical mumbo-jumbo, but basically i have already beaten the odds several times. now we have to hope that vast array of chemotherapies and other targeted therapies will continue to keep my cancer under control.