I know exactly what you mean about trying not to sound dismissive of people's trauma when they say, eg how traumatic it was to have stage 1, grade 1, ER+ BC treatment, that was all done and over with within a couple of weeks, with a normal breast afterwards, no chemo, minimal if any radiotherapy and a low grade cancer. I don't think they realise how lucky they are as cancer patients to have that type. But nobody is going to feel lucky when diagnosed with cancer, obviously, and I do absolutely need to remember that
There’s no luck associated with any cancer diagnosis. And many woman who does have an early stage diagnosis which was treated with surgery can have to live with a 60 percent chance of reoccurrence over the following two years. They also have regular check ups and scans over the next 5 years even though their chance of reoccurrence could be down to 12 percent by that stage.
And there are stage one cancers that do need treated with chemotherapy. So realistically stage one means very little in the grand scheme of things. And all the more so when a woman with a stage one diagnosis is told your cancer type is treatment resistant even at stage one and we would rather keep chemotherapy for a time it may reoccur. You see if it does come back there’s very little that can be done apart from trying a few rounds of chemo just for the sake of it because sadly most people die within 15 months of a recurrence anyway.
But maybe that’s where the luck that people talk about comes into it - you can die without having to go through much chemotherapy or any other form of treatment because there really wasn’t much if anything that could be done for your original stage 1 diagnosis anyway.
I think most people with a treatment resistant stage 1 diagnosis would walk on hot coals if it meant that should their cancer come back they’d have a whole list of treatment options they could try however awful they are.
There’s no greener side to the grass when it comes to cancer.