8%

Diagnosis Day!

Friday I met with my oncologist, who is pretty awesome and named after a character on Chuck, and he told me two things: 1.) the results of my pulmonary test and echocardiogram are great despite the fact that I am so lazy and out-of-shape I have actually come down with cancer, and 2.) the biopsy and PET scan confirm that I have Stage 2 "classic" Hodgkin's lymphoma, a blood cancer infecting some lymph nodes in my neck and chest (classic Hodgkin's! man, that is so Hodgkin's, that is just what Hodgkin's would do).

My primary care physician, who is not named after any TV show characters, was impressed with the job my surgeon did at digging past the tricky, perfectly healthy lymph node that popped up as soon as he cut me open to get to the juicy cancer center. It's the reason we have this diagnosis and the reason I don't need another surgery. Also the reason I can poke some parts without feeling it, but that is getting better.

My oncologist likes to tell me statistics, many of which are helpful perspective-wise. But the weird thing is he quoted my cure stat twice as 92%. That is probably the overall stat for Stage 2 lymphoma -- if you factored for age group and maybe some other things, probably that number for me would be higher. What a weird idea, to personalize statistics.

Math is weird to think about. I'm in the less than 1% of people of who get Hodgkin's. I stand in defiance of odds, so math feels pretty meaningless to me. Will I be in that 8%? I'm not even sure what that would mean. Anyway it is a rhetorical question. I am not really thinking about statistics. I guess I am wondering about fate.

There aren't really numbers for me, just eventualities. I will get better (likely), or I won't. 8% is unlikely until it happens. Then it is still statistically normal. Not even surprising. Like flipping coins. You don't expect long runs of only heads or tails, but if you flip the fucker infinity times, it's perfectly normal when that happens and somewhere it all balances out.

It's expected that some cases go south despite a hopeful prognosis. It's built into the system. So I can say "my chances are very good" because they are. But it is just as easy to say "his chances were very good" at my funeral and math won't be broken, math won't shed a tear. Doctors and loved ones will say "some times these things happen" and maybe "God works in mysterious ways" and take comfort in the likelihood that I am in heaven (though internet tests I've taken tell me these chances are less than 50%).

Reading this you would find it hard to believe that I assume I will be fine. I do! More or less. I just have a peculiar relationship to how things happen. Become, unfold. Cancer has sort of aggravated that tendency. And I have to process being told things like "92%" somehow.

After my appointment, I met up with my folks and my mom gave me a silver cross she had blessed by her priest. For her, I think numbers offer as much strength as her belief that there are blessings and prayers around me, a divine force watching out for me. But they mean as much to me as math.

The future hasn't happened yet. When it does I'm sure we'll all have plenty to say about it. I'm working within a smaller scale of time: tomorrow I bank some sperm, and Wednesday I start chemo. Everything after that is like a tree falling in the forest, and I think it's silly to concern yourself with falling trees unless you are standing under them.