Morning Reading In The Backyard

I'm terrified.  Jenny has stage iv pancreatic cancer, unnresected (meaning no surgery to remove tumor because its inoperable at this point

In non-resected patients, the actual 5-year survival remained unchanged over the same time period (0.8% vs 0.9%; p = 0.121).

[T]he data for actual 5-year survival are more modest3. Several series have failed to present any 5-year survivors and there are those that suggest that the overall actual survival rate is below 0.3% when all stages are combined4,5.

A brief note: I have a tendency to post and revise and add to these journal entries as days progress, events happen and thoughts form, e.g. I wrote a lengthy entry last night around midnight.  I also frequently, albeit not systematically, correct spelling and grammatical errors, not that anyone but I would care. I usually am typing with my thumbs on my phone. I suck at thumb typing, and the phone screen isn't conducive for editing.

I put a lot of stock in the journal article, excerpts of which are posted above.  It explains the unicorn-like nature of long-term survivors.  If 60000 people get this disease every year, and 48000 are diagnosed at stage iv a 5 percent cohort 5 years out would be 2400 people.  If you cull the websites of the support groups, the treatment organizations, and the fundraising sites, you just don't see that many people five years out.  Soul-crushing. I could believe 384 or even 432. Those numbers stagger the imagination--at least mine.  But if it is as low as .3 percent, then we are talking a mere gross of people--144 out of 48000, and I better understand the lyric, "I want to be there in that number."

Zen moment:

11:08 Jenny comes home from wherever she has been, I never know whether to believe her, and begins talking about next year and work. Worse than not being able to plan, given the vicissitudes of PDAC, is listening to her plan, as if we are just going to keep carrying on this way if she stays stable, when I can't imagine this going on ad infinitum. I got nothin' on Sisyphus, so I can't complain more than I do.

Today is chemo for Jenny. Her sister is going with her.