Above Average

I lied.

I have said in the past that I don't pay any attention to statistics. That I don't look up survival stats. That I ignore the numbers. This is not true.

In the few weeks after my diagnosis, I remember googling colon cancer on my phone while sitting in a dark bedroom putting my baby to sleep. Turns out that's not the most relaxing thing to do (who would have thunk it).

I do at least have the sense to filter out the studies that I don't fancy the results of, and instead just read the ones with the outcomes that suit me. 

One that stuck in my head gave an average life expectancy after diagnosis of stage 4 colon cancer of 13 months. 

It was the range of this one I liked - one patient lived a month, another lived 90 months.

(90 months is 7 and a half years. Saved you some brainjuice there).

I always fancied myself as an outlier, a bit out of the ordinary, certainly not average. And never mean.

Statistics have troubled me long before they were a life-and-death situation for me. I studied them on at least three separate occasions in college, and each time it was like I'd mistakenly signed up for Ancient Japanese 101.  Total brain freeze when it comes to chi-squared tests and, erm, the other stuff. I struggle with the basics like mean, mode and median. Every single time I see or use one of those terms, I have to start from the beginning, figuring out which one is the one which is in the middle, which one is the average one, which one is the one with the most ones in it.*

And when it comes down to it, how useful are averages or means to me now? The Means to An End that actually nobody can predict with anything even remotely approaching accuracy. I could have been the one month person. I certainly aim to beat the 90 month fella (why bother being better than average if you don't want to WIN!)

But I am now alive, when according to these statistics half of the people who were diagnosed on the same day as me are tucked up in their coffins, or sneezing in their urns. 

Bad luck, chums. 

I'm happier to be on the right side of the curve that is levelling off inexorably to zero. I am going to be that skew-er that everyone tries to rub out with confounding variables. 

Confound them, I say. 




*More useful educational stuff - don't say I don't help you out.