I'm half way home

Buckwirth said:

For Stage IV
The survival time frame is moved to 10 years (basically, it is the 10 year mark that the Oncologist is comfortable with very extended test intervals).

Colocan (Steve) posted a link to an article called Metastatic Colorectal Canncer: Management Challenges and Opportunities. It had some good statistical information on the five year rate.

For those uncomfortable with statistics, please stop reading now.

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Pertinent Paragraph:

Chemobiotherapy

There have been significant advances in the survival of patients with unresectable mCRC. Kopetz et al37 reviewed the survival of 2,470 patients with mCRC treated at the Mayo Clinic and The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. They found that the median overall survival time of patients treated from 1990 to 1997 was 14.2 months, compared with a median overall survival time of 29.3 months for patients treated during 2004–2006, when hepatic resection was performed in 20% of the patients and new chemotherapy and biotherapy agents were available, such as oxaliplatin, bevacizumab, and cetuximab. The authors also found that the 5-year overall survival rate increased from 9.1% to 19.2% during the period 2001–2003.

One last comment
Stephen Jay Gould had this to say on being diagnosed with Mesothelioma:

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"... I immediately recognized that the distribution of variation about the eight-month median would almost surely be what statisticians call "right skewed." (In a symmetrical distribution, the profile of variation to the left of the central tendency is a mirror image of variation to the right. In skewed distributions, variation to one side of the central tendency is more stretched out - left skewed if extended to the left, right skewed if stretched out to the right.) The distribution of variation had to be right skewed, I reasoned. After all, the left of the distribution contains an irrevocable lower boundary of zero (since mesothelioma can only be identified at death or before). Thus, there isn't much room for the distribution's lower (or left) half - it must be scrunched up between zero and eight months. But the upper (or right) half can extend out for years and years, even if nobody ultimately survives. The distribution must be right skewed, and I needed to know how long the extended tail ran - for I had already concluded that my favorable profile made me a good candidate for that part of the curve.

The distribution was indeed, strongly right skewed, with a long tail (however small) that extended for several years above the eight month median. I saw no reason why I shouldn't be in that small tail, and I breathed a very long sigh of relief. My technical knowledge had helped. I had read the graph correctly. I had asked the right question and found the answers. I had obtained, in all probability, the most precious of all possible gifts in the circumstances - substantial time. I didn't have to stop and immediately follow Isaiah's injunction to Hezekiah - set thine house in order for thou shalt die, and not live. I would have time to think, to plan, and to fight."

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The stats for mCRC are similarly right skewed. The median age of diagnoses is 74. And while I would not encourage a 74 year old to give up hope, those of us who are well under that age can take quite a bit of hope, for we sit on the better end of a long tail.