even if the glass is half full, you can still be thirsty

I'm going to be brutally honest. This is probably not the post to print out for Grandma.

Last night was rough. We had just gone to bed and Jake said something offensive. I rolled over to ignore him, which normally would have been enough. Any other night and I would have just fallen asleep and woke up this morning in a great mood..... But it wasn't any other night. I think things finally clicked. I started crying....and crying... and crying. Then I stopped. Then I started again. An hour later, when I was into a full-fledged sobfest, it finally came out, "I have....only....a fifty....fifty.....chance....to survive....survive...five years." It went on with me babbling for a while and saying mean things to Jake. He was great though. He held me and told me he loved me and would be with me for this journey. What a fun way for him to spend his birthday. :\

I woke up this morning with puffy eyes and in low spirits. I decided to Google survival rates to see how far off I was....the results were not very good.
It seems before this recurrence, I had about a 60-80% chance. Oral cancer has one of the highest rates of recurrence, about 50%, but it usually shows up in the same side lymphnodes. That's why they removed all the ones on my right side back in Oct 2008. I was in the less than 10% of folks who get it on the opposite side, go figure.
So, now that I had a recurrence, and the lymphnode was on the opposite side of my neck, I think this puts me at a StageIVa, T2N2cM0.

And that gives me a 37% chance at 5 year survival.

37.

Not even a 50-50 shot.

I've always been so optimistic. I generally get a lot of comments about how strong I am. I know those statistics are for people who were treated 10-15 years ago. I know medical technology has improved since then. I know I have a better shot because I'm young and "healthy". I know I have a great team of doctors.

Still, even if I see the glass as half-full, I can still be thirsty, can't I?