What's Jared's prognosis? Only God knows that. So we've never asked a doctor what he thinks the prognosis is, nor would we listen if he told us. Because if people defy odds, the doctor can't possibly give us an accurate guess. Each case is different. The statistics would show that Jared has a 10% chance to live five years. I don't think I would be any more or less scared if that number was 2% or 50%. We don't really care what happens in other cases, that doesn't make Jared's outcome any different. And the only outcome we are concerned about is his. And dwelling on numbers or statistics only hexes his ability to fight the disease.
We don't dig much to find stories of people with his cancer. We've already watched his mother go through it, so we've seen first-hand what can happen. Generally the tumor keeps growing back, and at some point surgery and treatments just aren't worth it anymore. Even the survival stories are depressing. One we've seen is a lady in Oregon who was diagnosed 12 years ago (she, too, had young kids at the time of diagnosis). The doctors told her she had less than a year to live. She's still going strong 12 years later, and says she's been enjoying watch her kids grow! But she has had to have tumor-removal surgery 4 times in those 12 years, and says that the effects from surgery have left her at this point with the brain of an 80-yr-old. But she seems to live a very active lifestyle. Her first re-growth didn't occur for four years.
Another was one I came across just a couple weeks ago. It was a guy with his exact cancer, GBM, and the tumor was encapsulated. He was given 6 months to live. This guy just celebrated 25 years since diagnosis, and he's never had any tumor re-growth! Yet he has suffered severe effects in his brain from radiation. (But keep in mind, this was 25 years ago. Radiation is much more precise now than it was back then.)
While these stories certainly give us hope, I guess we're selfish in our desire for more. We both feel confident he has many good years ahead of him. We both wish we knew what "many" is - is that five years? Or 50 years? As I said before, only God knows that.
