I have a bit of sympathy for doctors - heads they're wrong, tails they are wrong too. Making people depressed rarely helps recovery. Giving false hope makes people disillusioned and angry. I don't know how old those stats are, and as @kmakm says, a breakdown would be interesting, but I focus on the facts that a) cancer is no longer seen as automatically a death sentence; b) treatment is getting better - not always great, but better; and c) developments in treatment of many cancers (again not all) are getting exponentially faster. Many of us live in a relatively safe environment where we don't expect to be starving, homeless, or die younger than we imagine we should. But older women particularly can face the 2nd gloomy prospect, and car accidents, heart disease, and other joys are pretty effective at achieving the third. When I got a very nasty infection some time ago (thanks seroma!) I realised that 100 years ago I would have simply been filed under "death by sepsis". Cancer was a distant second as a threat to plain old bacteria. Something I think about with superbugs and overuse of antibiotics for ailments that may not really need them. I have kept a quote from Jane Caro since the time I was having treatment - I found then it helped my perspective. Her child was extremely ill, and she was talking to a neonatologist about how to cope.
" He just said the following, words I've never forgotten and that have
formed my approach to parenting and to life (and, it seems, the universe) ever
since. "Terrible things can happen," he said. "They can happen
to anyone. There's nothing special about you and nothing special about Polly.
Danger is reality, safety is an illusion."
Her child survived. Many of us do. And if you can manage it, living without that illusionary safety net can be a wonderful thing. It just takes an awful lot of practice.
