Photo: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images Last spring, about three months after my breast-cancer diagnosis and six weeks after my mastectomy, I received my “oncotype report,” the document that calculated my mortality risk. The report would give me the odds of being healthy for the next decade and help my doctors advise me on what to do next: would I need chemotherapy? Obviously, I waited for this report on tenterhooks.
I walked around with a 3 percent chance that my cancer will recur somewhere awful — in my liver or my bones or my brain — feeling bright and cocky about my future, and now I’m sitting indoors, gaining weight and losing track of the date and occasionally finding myself on my knees in the kitchen based on a far smaller risk whose precise parameters we do not know.
And yet it’s so tempting to look away from them. Look no further than the current presidential race. At 77, Joe Biden has a more than 4 percent probability of dying within a year, according to the Social Security Administration’s actuarial tables. At 73, Donald Trump has a 3 percent chance — but at 243 pounds , he also falls into the medical category “obese,” a condition that increases his vulnerability to “all causes of death,” according to the CDC.
Mostly these adjustments were sensible responses to actual risks, though I confess to retaining a germ of irrational death panic. Until I became a parent, I loved airplane travel. I flew whenever I could — for work, for fun — relishing that feeling of being untethered and soaring, of starting here and landing there simply because I wanted to and could.
lisaxmiller I felt from this article more than corona, we are living with dangerous things in our day-to-day life. If we need to worrying each issues, there no time to move on.
lisaxmiller This was not only superbly written but the message is spot on. Hope Ms Miller’s health keeps up! coronavirus
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: Forbes - 🏆 394. / 53 Read more »
Source: NYMag - 🏆 111. / 63 Read more »
Source: billboard - 🏆 112. / 63 Read more »
Source: Allure_magazine - 🏆 473. / 51 Read more »
Source: RollingStone - 🏆 483. / 51 Read more »
Source: ELLE Magazine (US) - 🏆 472. / 51 Read more »