BCNA's State of the Nation Report launched today

@melclarity I'm sorry I know this upsets you but I do believe that the exercise message is very important. 

When we are speaking about the risk of recurrence we are speaking about the population risk - that is what happens to a group of 100, or 1000, or 1 million people. Currently we can't predict whether an individual will have a recurrence or not. We are getting closer but we aren't there yet. 
For an individual you either have a recurrence or you don't. There is no inbetween - it's not like you can get a percentage of a tumour!?
But for a group there is a percentage risk because you can measure how many per hundred have a recurrence. 
If you have a group of 100 people with breast cancer who exercise and a group of 100 people with similar cancers who don't exercise there will be less people in the exercise group who have a recurrence - that has been proven.
This means that SOME people in the group will have avoided a recurrence by exercising. It does not mean that if you exercise you won't have a recurrence because sadly there will still be people in the exercise group who have a recurrence - as you have experienced.

This same principle applies to all our adjuvant treatments - radiation, chemo, hormone therapy - it has been proven that these treatments will reduce the risk of recurrence but none of them eliminate it completely. Otherwise, as you say, there would be no recurrences. 

I understand that for you - your recurrence was 100% - it happened to you and nothing you did (and I know that you did everything you could) stopped it. But in a group of 100 people like yourself - some of them would not have had a recurrence and that is why we say that the risk is reduced. 

I do wish it could be more more clear so that people like yourself don't feel that they are being blamed.