Everybody wants to beat cancer and live a long time. I’ve always been intrigued by long term cancer survivors. What makes them do so well? Sometimes they have a “good cancer”, one that is slow growing, or was discovered at an earlier stage. Sometimes they have received a superior treatment. And sometimes, especially with metastatic incurable cancer, the reasons aren’t so clear as to why they are doing well. Perhaps patient factors like motivation are playing a part in allowing someone to beat the odds.
When I worked at CTCA I became intrigued by the long term survivors, those remarkable individuals who had been battling incurable cancer for a long time, and just kept plugging along. What made them different??
I came across a theory one day written by Dr. Richard Gott. His theory had to do with estimating how long things will last, if you know how long they have been in existence already. As Gott simply put it, “Things that have been around for a long time tend to stay around for a long time.” Common sense, but he made mathematical formulas and was able to successfully calculate things like “how long will the Berlin wall continue to stand?”
Applying this theory to cancer, I figured that cancer patients who have already been fighting cancer for a long time would likely tend to continue successfully fighting cancer for a long while to come.
I decided to examine the records of our patients to see if this was true. I analyzed hundred of cancer registry records of stage 4 incurable patients who were coming to CTCA for a consultation. I looked at how long they had been fighting cancer before coming to CTCA, and then subsequently how long they survived after that point. The results were dramatic. Patients who had already been fighting their cancer for over 24 months tended to live an additional 10 months longer than those who had been fighting for less than 24 months. The longer a patient had been fighting cancer, the longer he would continue to successfully fight.
Was there anything special about long term survivors? Yes! They were younger at diagnosis, more often female, tended to have an earlier stage at diagnosis, and had more breast cancer and less lung cancer. Long term survivors were different in many ways, both obvious and unobvious. Their cancer may have a better biology, they have been healthier and stronger, and they may have been more motivated to fight the cancer.
Cancer patients should not be discouraged if they are still early in their fight against cancer – even long term survivors were once short term survivors. But hopefully this will give encouragement that you can “catch the wave”, in that the longer you fight, the better you will continue to do.
Please note that this principle is not intended to predict the survival of a single individual with cancer. It is simply another variable in estimating prognosis for a group.
Live long and prosper.