I never said that I agreed with what the author wrote. My own mother is currently living proof of why numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. She contracted breast cancer back in the early ‘80s, and the chances they gave her weren’t all that good. Breast cancer treatments weren’t as far advanced then as they are today, and they were talking about her having a 50% chance of survival 10 years later. She went through chemo, and eventually had to have a mastectomy. It was miserable for her, but was it worth it? Well, here we are well over two decades later, and she’s perfectly fine, without any recurrence.
Numbers can be deceiving - true, the chance of CPR actually saving a life is pretty small, only something like 3% of people who have it performed on them survive. But you know what? I’d take those odds over nothing - heck, multiply that 3% by the number of people who have a cardiac arrest, and the amount of people saved each year by CPR is probably in thousands. A small price to pay for a few cracked or broken ribs.
I posted it because I thought it might be of interest here, not because I agreed with all of its sentiments.
You said this regarding your Mom: "...She went through chemo, and eventually had to have a mastectomy. It was miserable for her, but was it worth it?"
I would say (and I suspect you would agree) that would be her call...my best friend's sister, married with two pre-teen kids, just lost a five year battle with leukemia. In all my years in medicine, I have never, ever seen anyone fight as hard as this woman fought, and she did it for her kids. Just unbelievable. My friend was amazed, astonished and appalled at what she went through to try and beat it. She was hospital-bound and bed-bound for a long, long time. But he says, as miserable as she was, she was willing to endure nearly anything out of love for her two young children. So it was her call, though an extreme one.
To her it was worth it.
It’s an excellent specimen of its ilk, and a timely
reminder of what those doing the planners have in mind,
so thanks for the OP. However, we here at FR have become
rather sensitized to people who aver “they are only
airing the issues” etc. when they are really advocating
e.g. medical abandonment. It’s not that easy to write
a really short introductory OP about one’s motives for
a post either, so I’m not telling you that you must do
so, but it’s a good idea. *especially* if you truly are
wondering “what does this person mean” as many would
seeing this for the first time, by which I refer to many
who *aren’t* on FR so don’t have the benefit of the
background it provides.