Unlucky roll

Graphic NYT 1/5/15

After watching one of my best friends chopped down by intestinal cancer 17 months after diagnosis, I can vouch that it is truly a crap shoot. He got a really frickin' unlucky roll. There are 7 different mutations of his type of cancer and he got one of the most therapy-resistant ones. It wasn't the very worst mutation, but it sure was bad enough.

Make no mistake, we have world class cancer therapy and research here, mostly at the University of PA. My man did everything he should have done, sought out the most advanced experimental interventional radiology, exercised, researched, took an active role in his care, yet didn't even live out the stingy 2 year prognosis the original oncologists gave him. Cancer care pros like my wife talk about cancer care evolving as chronic disease management, but there was nothing chronic about this. This was as acute, random and brutal as the grim reaper gets. I now wonder if he would have had any less time or better quality of life, if instead of going through chemo, he just opted for palliative care at the end. Flip of the coin.

The internet is full of wonderful, hopeful breast cancer survivor stories. I know a handful of survivors. And I also knew two women who were dead months after their diagnoses. I knew another new mother who was told 18 years ago to make her final arrangements. She got to see her daughter's 15th birthday before she passed. Flip of the coin.

So, I liked the article "Cancer's Random Assault," but I'm amazed by the vitriol of the responses. People seem to need a cause/solution construct for everything. We anthropomorphize entropy--put a black hooded cloak on it and give it a scythe. We treat it like something or someone we can blame, fight or bargain with.
 

However complex the causalities, however deep the science goes in search of them, there is still an unseen, quantum aspect of life that you can't put a face on.  The numbers tell a story, but it's not a story about individuals, but about aggregate populations and statistical probability. In our vanity we are deeply uncomfortable "just being a number" but the truth is that sometimes we are just dots on a curve.

To my friends who are survivors, I salute you. Whatever hell you went through, you're still with us. You are lucky and we are lucky to still have you. To those who've passed and to those who grieve them; you did nothing wrong. Life and death are mostly like that. Just pure dumb random luck.