Lies, damned lies, and...

My sister likes to remind me that prognosis is not destiny.

I took a lot of statistics: For a full year in high school, and then twice more in college. And all the while bitching about "Myaaaaah, when am I ever going to use this? A computer can do this!"

Statistics seem much more relevant when they apply toward your own chance of mortality.

At the time of my diagnosis, which was stage iib osteosarcoma, my chances of five-year survival were roughly 65-70%, assuming that I could tolerate the chemotherapy.
When it turned out that the methotrexate/cisplatin/doxorubicin combination was ineffective, my chances fell to about 50%.
When we learned about the metastasis, which makes it stage iv osteosarcoma, my chances fell to about 30%.
And then, the brain metastasis. One person has ever survived 5 years with a brain met. Not 1% of everybody -- one person, ever, since they started keeping statistics about cancer survival. She's alive today, in Florida.

And yet, I'm still the same incidence I was at the start. I'm still the same person. (Sort of. I'm nicer now, but also more self-obsessed.) Lachesis allots the same amount of silver thread. The statistics change, but my life remains the same: Mine.

But I'm famous in the worst possible way now: I'm a board question for oncology, and there are two pending journal articles about me in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (or so I've heard). This is even worse than being on a reality show!

Sensitivity fail.

Here is a conversation I had with Lee, a woman in my Introduction to Library Science class, after she noticed I'm not awesome at walking down stairs.

Q: What's wrong with your leg?
A: Oh, I have some trouble walking down stairs.
Q: Why?
A: I had some surgery.
Q: What kind of surgery?
A: Uh...I had some bones removed.
Q: Like Harry Potter? I think Professor Lockheart did the same thing.
A: Yeah, I had the same thing: Quidditch accident.
Q: Hahaha, but no, really: What's wrong with your leg?
A: Uh...Actually, I had osteogenic sarcoma in my leg.
Q: Osteo...?
A: It's a kind of bone cancer.
Q: Oh.
A: Which also explains my terrible haircut.
Q: I always said, if I had cancer, I would get flowers painted on my head. You know, like henna tattoos and stuff.
A (not really): Actually, your scalp is so intensely painful that the best you can even *hope* for is wearing a wig; in actual practice, you would probably go bald because of sheer agony.
A (really): That would be cool.
Q: I know, right?!
Other group members: Awkward silence.
A: So...governmental libraries?