The level of venom toward me exhibited by you and that other sanctimonious bag of wind, seanmerc, is truly astonishing. By your "logic" only someone who has had cancer or a relative who has had cancer is entitled to speak on the subject. You're both "Jersey Girls" claiming that your relatives' experiences somehow elevate you to say what you want without contradiction. Just ain't so. If that were the case your relative would be being treated by other cancer patients and their famlies, but I'd be willing to bet that your relative is being treated by an MD (who probably never had cancer)
Oh and BTW I had two close relatives die of cancer or cancer related causes (in one case heart attack during treatment). Does this entitle me to speak on your exhalted level of hypocrital sanctimony? It's TOTALLY irrelevant to any knowledge I have of the probabilities of survival as I said, that came from statistical analysis and background information in a clinical trial analysis job. So yes, I would say I probably know more about life tables with various treatment regimens than you do. So rather than whine at me for speaking the truth about the prognosis for Stage IV cancer of any sort (grim) accept it.
Tell you what--when you're able to make an intelligent argument without resorting to name-calling [I'm not from Jersey, nor am I a girl] and schoolyard insults, we can talk some more. I don't see that happening, though. People generally resort to name-calling, insults and the ever-popular "I know more than you" statements when their argument is weak and unsupportable, or they're just plain insecure. From the look of things, that's where you're at.