I knew a guy who was diagnosed with stomach cancer at 27 years old. Never had a health problem in his life, he didn't even know how insurance worked yet. It was late stage and he was given 6 months to live. He was recently engaged before that and they moved their wedding up to 3 months away in order to have it before he passed. But he was gone from us just 6 weeks after the original diagnosis. He fought like hell to survive. He had every reason to. He was diligent with everything the doctors told him and he was gone within weeks despite being given months.
Cancer is horrible and it is unpredictable by its very nature. Cancer is literally at its definition a collection of unpredictable mutated cells. Thats why it is so hard for doctors to estimate or predict. It is unpredictable. Sometimes the unpredictability works in your favor and sometimes it works against you. But cancer cells do not listen to willpower, despite the common narrative. The reality is it is good and bad luck that often determines your fate.
As a secondary anecdote. I have a friend who's mom had skin cancer, a small patch the size of a dime on her hip. Skin cancer is generally incredibly survivable and low risk (in the world of cancers). She had it removed as a simple procedure and thought she was fine. 3 months later she started having periods of confusion or getting lost doing simple things like going to the store for milk, she would end up gone for the hours and hours forgetting why she even left the house and ending up on the other side of town. It turns out it spread to her brain and she died just 10 days after that first episode. Cancer is brutal.
It is well known that your psychological state influences the immune system a lot, and even from anecdata, you can see that people rapidly deteriorate when they give up. It is not a coincidence all these terms are used.
Can all cancers be beaten by sheer will? Of course not.
But it does play a huge factor in many cases.
I know I am going to be hated for this comment, but... Given my own experience with the medical system, I can't resist and state the (for me) obvious: Maybe that was the reason for him to pass so early...
(To put my comment in context, I was abused for a medical experiment by a high ranking doctor at the age of 7, and am 100% blind since then.)
I.E. x% more patient survive after n years while using this or this treatment. And same treatment could increase odds of dying sooner from other decease out of scope with the research years later.
Your point though seems to be rooted in what happened to you as a child. I'm sorry to hear it. Could you share something about what happened please?
And no, I am not going to post my personal medical history on HN in detail. My short description of the incident is already personal enough. Besides, what would that help? Everyone picks their own convenient opinion these days, all that can come out of this is that people publicly will doubt my personal experience, which is not useful for anyone.
Meanwhile, the rest of us ride on pure luck as we watch cancer destroy our loved ones. They gave my dad a month with a glial blastoma. He lasted about 6, most of which the dad I knew was not present for. Tbfh, I feel like he would have rather gone quick, not enduring the twisted shit we watched him go through.
citation needed. This meta study seems to not have found many biological links: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361287/
Not everyone is “picking their own convenient opinion”. There are good people in this world that just want the best for others. I think that may be the case here.
Godspeed.
- Correlation is not causation: A medical error, followed by a death does not implies medical error caused death
- The study that claim is based (BMJ analysis), suggest that 62% of US hospital deaths are caused by medical errors. Which seems hard to believe, especially having similar studies instead suggesting a 3.6% in UK, 4.6% in Norway, and 5% in a meta study
- Experts do not agree which facts are medical errors
Most (All?) other claims were about high uncertainty. Small Ns and possible biases in the samples, many obvious and others even irrelevant criticisms
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There's still a lot of uncertainty, even in the criticisms.
I think they could have easily made estimations with the UK, Norway and meta study hospital data to have a minimum estimate of medical errors to counter BMJ analysis with a more reasonable number.
We really should calculate more and talk less (I am already sinning with this comment --_(=/)_--)
I did some maths (Or Code interpreter did? but I did verified unsourced numbers are in the ball park, at least for UK)
So for UK the estimate of deaths by medical errors is ~11k deaths, which puts it at the 7th cause factor according to this chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-number-of-deaths-b... just below dementia and above liver desease
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Keep in mind that I am not sure if the 3.6% figure really means causation, I am tired!
GPT4 chat link:https://chat.openai.com/share/7d235295-c149-45f0-ac3d-2a0cfd...
Brief naturalistic stressors (such as exams) tended to suppress cellular immunity while preserving humoral immunity. Chronic stressors were associated with suppression of both cellular and humoral measures
The more a stressor deviated from those parameters by becoming more chronic, however, the more components of the immune system were affected in a potentially detrimental way.I understand. I hope my request to learn more came across as polite to you. The reason for asking was to understand more about the motivations and beliefs / experiences behind your comment.
> Everyone picks their own convenient opinion these days, all that can come out of this is that people publicly will doubt my personal experience, which is not useful for anyone.
I like to think HN is a forum where this is less likely, or where poor responses are flagged or downvoted, but of course I've seen it here too, and I understand your caution.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24075798/
Whether it would be too late to do anything after getting the diagnosis is another question. Studies that look at sun exposure over time and mortality (e.g. Lindqvist's studies) show that it takes decades of sun exposure to lower the mortality risk by this amount.
The way I read u/ecohen16's telling is that Mitnick first beat apathy and bureaucracy just to have a shot at mitigating a disease, thereby postponed the inevitable.
I've lived it. Late 80s, I had a terminal diagnosis. Lucky me, my doc found a clinical trial, and fought like hell to get my HMO to pay. Justification was for org to use me to learn about emerging treatment (stem cell transplant is current variation).
A few years ago, my buddy got a terminal diagnosis. Apparent chronic sports related injury turned out to be a late stage tumor, which had spread. Prognosis was 3 - 6 months. None of his care providers were interested in escalating, only talking about palliative care and hospice. He did exactly as Mitnick. Managed to get enrolled in a clinical trial using immunotherapy for his precise diagnosis. Timing wise, a few weeks either way and he'd be dead. Dumb luck.
I can give a few more examples. (And 100s of counter examples.)
Do patients beat cancer?
Of course not. Among the survivors I know, disease (like cancer) is part of life and you deal with it. Or not.
But, some times, if we're really stubborn, and have sufficient resources and support and dumb luck, we can do things to live a little bit longer.
> that did not "Fight hard enough"
Sometimes the patient, family, and especially the care providers don't fight hard enough. For all sorts of reasons. Probably because awareness of mortality made humans neurotic and we're all just winging it. Probably because everything is russian dolls of triage.
Any way, it's just a metaphor. Chose the one that works for you.
Just like I refuse to victim blame/shame, I'm not going to judge another person's coping mechanisms.