Throw me a lifebelt please...

Today was not a good day, I was feeling scared and low about starting treatment, and couldn't make my mind focus on anything else so have faffed around reading the internet. Then the internet made me angry, or at least what I found out about chemo did. 

I was thinking about my appointment last week with oncology and how little they had told me. We are all different, a friend of mine just wanted to do whatever the doctor said was best to do, I want to know about outcomes and assess the treatment I'm offered. I realised the doctor hadn't give me any of that information last week and I was too preoccupied with being half naked with lots of people in the room to remember to ask. The NHS use a predictor tool which is very easy to use if you know your histology. The graphs below are my predictions with and without chemo, so I was interested to know how little impact chemo has on those stats. 

All the way along, I have said to everyone that I don't want chemo. I knew I would have it if I had to but I would almost do ANYTHING else. The impression I had been given is that at my age, with my histology, it is the best way to prevent secondary cancers. You think you are zapping everything so there's a good chance it is nuked. But no. I was a bit taken about to find out that chemo is indicated in a treatment plan if benefit is > 3-5%. There is no knowing if you will be the 97% that chemo doesn't work for or the 3% that it does. 

As the  doctor points out, you have to take that risk because otherwise you would feel terrible if you got secondary cancer and hadn't tried chemo. I just cant quite believe that there is so little certainty about the use of such toxic treatment, when the impact of the treatment itself can be quite terrible for some people, and can last long afterwards. I can really understand why some people choose not to have it, when that is a very poor chance of either predictability or success imho. There just isn't an alternative...