As a part of the process of approaching treatment, I actively avoided becoming too knowledgeable. I distinctly remember a day before the first round of chemo when our medical oncologist said something along the lines of “You could look up information on outcomes and survival rates among patient populations, but I suggest that you don’t.” We took him at his word, or at least I did and I put the focus on this one cancer in this one patient in this one community in this one moment in time. One of one. 

Along the way, there were times when information would arrive without us seeking it. The first time it happened I was at Froedtert in the lab waiting for a blood draw before chemo round 2. I was semi-mindlessly scrolling through my Facebook feed and I came across a post from a high school classmate who had something to say about stage four cancer. It was relevant so I read it. And I remember my heart sinking to my feet in that moment as she explained in detail exactly what stage four diagnosis means to her in her experience.

Ignorance was bliss.

That was not a one-off. It’s happened many times like when I was researching Dr. William Li, food as medicine scientist and author of the book Eat To Beat Disease. Listening to his Ted Talk, I was exposed to a graphic from a 2003 study that shows of life expectancy of stage four lung cancer patients from the date of diagnosis. Ouch. 

Then there was the discovery, again on Facebook, that a different high school classmate died of advanced lung cancer in late 2020. He had been diagnosed just seven months prior. Not long after that, thanks to lung Cancer Awareness Month, I learned that lung cancer is the number one cancer killer in America. It kills more than numbers two, three, and four combined. 

There have been plenty of other occasions like these and I won’t take you through reading about them all. Each time it would take me hours or days to process the info so I could contextualize it in such a way that I could make it not feel like a reflection of my situation or my future.

I have a few takeaways from these experiences. The first is that you can’t learn without learning, which means in the process of actively working on feeling good, there will be times when you’ll come across information that makes you feel bad. The second is that I am tremendously fortunate. I have learned firsthand that the countless positives of the experience I am having were not guaranteed at the beginning and don’t always happen for everyone. The third is a message of hope. Learning that 84% of patients die from lung cancer sucks. But it also means 16% of patients survive. 16%! That’s a huge number of people and I love my chances of working my way into the minority cohort.

Wherever you are, whatever you’re going through, there is always hope.