Corinne was told that because her cancer was at Stage 3 or 4 (rather than Stage 1 or 2), this radiation therapy would be optional. During our conversation on the drive home after getting this information, we figured out that it wasn’t exactly good news. It meant Corinne’s chance of survival was low enough that this treatment would not necessarily make the definite difference to save her life.

Unlike most people I know, Corinne has considered each of her cancer treatments optional. She insists that she makes the choice whether to accept any therapy offered. She carefully and practically weighs the expected impact on her quality of life against the predicted benefits. If this thing should end up killing her, she wants to avoid spending the last months of her life crippled by painful and time-consuming treatments.

In the end, Corinne chose to accept the 18 daily radiation treatments because
she was told that doing so would reduce the odds of the tumor recurring in her neck from 50% down to 20%. She continued to worry, though, that the radiation was just a sugar pill to make her feel she was curing her cancer. We felt that this might be a superstitious exercise in service of statistics. It was like being offered one of those terrible “deals you can refuse.”