I wrote this quickly while I was trying to think back through the way I lost a relative to cancer, and I suppose this brief bit kind of makes no sense because i

I wrote this quickly while I was trying to think back through the way I lost a relative to cancer, and I suppose this brief bit kind of makes no sense because it sounds non-linear: "And then a scan brings you right back to the median again, or much less." What I meant here is that the first diagnosis is not the last. Once you start doing well, other treatments become possible that weren't possible without extra evidence or without some remission. And they give you hope -- they extend where you think you'll get to; which life events you will see. You might get to a kind of remission that surprises even the doctors; they try to help you understand how long you might now have. But parts of this are like Monty Hall -- some of the probabilities are new, but some are from the original diagnosis all the same. The diagnosis isn't the cancer, and the lump of cancer they are watching might not be the offshoot that does the final damage.