A bit confronting

I received the report from my Oncologist, for clearance to go on the assignment to the Solomon Islands. It had percentages in it that stunned me to read - although I think that I was probably given them early on after diagnosis, they were in a different form that I found difficult to understand. I think I liked the 'difficult to understand' form actually!

The report says..... "Katrina was diagnosed with stage 3a left breast carcinoma PT3PM2M0 in June 2007 and has undergone a left mastectomy and axillary clearance 2/7/2007 (63mm, grade 2, 4 of 8 lymph nodes positive, vascular invasion positive, ER >70%2+, PR 30-70%3+, HER2-......"

(Yes, you read it right..... it was 63mm ...... I still haven't come across anyone else with anything near a 6.3cm tumour!)

That wasn't the confronting bit though..... further into the report she wrote "Her risk of relapse or new primary at time of diagnosis was estimated at approximately 80% over 10 years but this has been reduced by an estimated 59% with post operative therapies." By my calculation that still means I have a 47% chance of it coming back in the next 10 years. While I like that number much better than 80%, it's still a scary number...