Lizzie’s got the kettle on in the kitchen.
Suddenly, she bursts into tears.
I go up and give her a hug and she hugs back.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.
Wiping her eyes, Lizzie explains that – because it was her last chemo – she felt it was time yesterday to ask her oncologist for some facts and figures. Specifically, the survival rates of women with Stage 3C ovarian cancer. Specifically… Lizzie’s chances of survival.
And, because he’d been asked and because he’s a doctor, her oncologist had laid out the facts and figures matter-of-factly.
‘OK,’ I say, nervously, ‘so what did he say?’
We have spoken about the stats before. In fact, Lizzie asked me to research them, when she originally started her chemotherapy. To give me a better understanding of what was happening to her. It wasn’t pretty reading.
But what I read… what I’ve conveniently stored away in my mind to make it easier to deal with… doesn’t really prepare me for this.
Lizzie tells me what the oncologist told her. That in the cases of women who have Stage 3C ovarian cancer (and have an operation then chemo to get rid of it) only fifteen percent escape the cancer coming back again.
Of the eighty-five percent whose cancer returns, only half of those survive beyond five years.
In other words, Lizzie only has a slightly better than one in two chance of surviving this.
Are those worse odds than if you go to fight in a war?
‘I was so hopeful about everything,’ says Lizzie, ‘but when the oncologist told me that…’
The tears come back and I give her another hug.
Lizzie goes on to say she regrets asking the oncologist at all. Now she has to deal with that information while she’s already laid low by the chemotherapy. ‘I wish I’d asked after the chemo.’
I nod. It’s clear both of our heads have been stuck in the sand for the last few months, on the whole issue (mine no doubt a good deal more than Lizzie’s). Why couldn’t we have left them buried, for a few more weeks?
Lizzie takes a deep breath… then, like some kind of symbol of British fortitude, pours herself a cup of tea.
‘I’ve got to be one of the fifteen percent,’ she says, her old defiance returning. ‘The ones who don’t get their cancer back.’
‘You will be,’ I say.
P. D. Clifton 
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