50/50... the true stat to live by, an excerpt by Brian Hill, OCF Founder

Well said, thank you Brian...

"I deal with lots of doctors as part of my work at OCF. Treatment people from all disciplines and researchers both. I work with the SEER database numbers routinely as we are looking towards the future by reviewing the newly obtained data from the past.

Of all these people, one good friend at MDACC who quelled the same drive for an answer in me told me the answer that he gives to every patient that he sees, for the very reasons I spoke to above. "Your chances are 50/50". He told me that he does this because in those who might have a lesser number, knowing it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy; people can just give up fighting or trying. In people with a number above that (who might still die anyway for reasons also mentioned above dealing with genetic predispositions) it may create unrealistic expectations.

Sooner or later, even if you become a student of the SEER database and try to plumb its depths of statistics, you will eventually come to a point of acceptance of the unknowable nature of your quest and equilibrium with it in your spirit. It might take you a year of perusing data sets, but in the end that is the only answer that exists - you cannot know anything definitive.

I wish that I had not spent my first couple of years of survivorship obsessed with this. In the end, while I can quote you chapter and verse of statistics from the SEER database, that data in its own way is flawed and can be biased. It can be twisted to mean what you desire it to, and in the end the answer will still be the same. There are no absolutes no guarantees.

Live each day fully as if it were your last, as tomorrow is promised to no one. My life has never been more productive since I embraced that idea, my days never so rich, nor fully spent in meaningful pursuits. I wish that I had lived this way before I had cancer… the things that I could have enjoyed and accomplished if I had just learned to live in the moment. To fully enjoy the companionship of friends and loved ones, to savor every meal for its intricacies, to fully embrace the joy of the good that passes my way and the pain of what comes in equal doses. That we are all going to die is a given, sooner or later it is everyones destiny, and almost never in a manner or time of their choosing. But not everyone fully lives. Awareness of the finite nature of our existence is the beginning, and release of the desire to try to control is the constant battle for most. So let me set you on a path. Your odds of living to a ripe old age are about 50%. Own it and get on with the living."