Risk Vs. Worry

You get cancer, get treated, and they say ' here, go on with your life ' . (That last part is so helpful! NOT.) Somewhere in the middle of all that treatment crap, they give you all the numbers about statistics - which,as the patient, we interpret wrong. If they say you have a 99% chance of living five years, all us patients put ourselves into the 1% who are not going to make it. (And we ignore the fact that the entire 99% could be hit by a bus at any time.)Over at 'The Big C and Me' , I read today ' s post by Renn about' Five Years and Counting ' and she included the American Cancer Society ' s statistic about survival rates for stage II breast cancer. Then I read this post about cancer people mis-interpreting risk and worrying too much -When Does Worry Outweigh Risk. The article starts with:" For patients with breast cancer — even after treatment — worries about risk are common. Patients wonder, could the cancer come back? Will it spread throughout the body? "Obviously whoever wrote this has never had breast cancer. Of course we worry, its cancer. Anyway, some research was done and they found after talking to 1000 women with breast cancer diagnoses behind them and found:" They found 36 percent of the DCIS patients and 25 percent of the low-risk patients substantially overestimated their risk of distant recurrence.Women who overestimated their risk were three times more likely to report worry about recurrence. They had higher distress scores and lower mental health. "Thi...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer cancer recurrence cancer risk statistics stress worry Source Type: blogs