PREDICTING
SURVIVAL

Topics: Circumstances and Faith; Comfort; Control; Death; Disease; Faith; Fear; Hope; Human Nature; Illness; Medicine; Mortality; Perspective; Powerlessness; Trials; Trust; Worry

References: Exodus 15:26; Job 14:5; Psalm 121:7–8; Isaiah 26:3; 2 Corinthians 5:1; James 5:13–16

“You’re gonna be OK,” the lady in pink had whispered as she wheeled me down the hall. “Eighty percent of breast lumps aren’t cancer.”

I stifled a sigh. So far, statistics had not been in my favor. My breast lump, which was big enough to be seen by the naked eye, hadn’t shown up on a mammogram. Mammograms are effective only 80 percent of the time. The volunteer’s prediction wasn’t accurate, either; I discovered I did have breast cancer.

So why, years after surviving a mastectomy and treatment for breast cancer, was I still drawn to survival statistics like a mosquito to a lamp—especially after hearing that a fellow survivor had recurred?

The size of my lump plus five positive nodes had driven down my five-year survival rate to less than 25 percent. Yet I, like so many other cancer survivors, had learned how senseless statistics were in forecasting survival. As one doctor said, “Maybe only 10 percent of patients with your type and stage of cancer are cured, but within that 10 percent, your odds are 0 percent or 100 percent.”

So what drove me to statistics? Perhaps it’s the kind of fear that drove King Saul to consult a medium on the eve of a battle that would later claim his life (1 Samuel 28). God had stopped communicating with the king through ordinary means, so Saul tried to conjure up the spirit of Samuel to tell him what would happen to him. Saul got the message all right, but it knocked him to the ground.

Cancer knocks us to the ground, too. Still, rather than running to statistics (or doctors who quote them) to ease our fears, we should trust in our heavenly Father, who alone knows how long we will live.

—Phyllis Ten Elshof, What Cancer Cannot Do (Zondervan, 2006)