3 weeks. 98.7%.

Whenever I get too worked up about all this stuff, I walk around with two numbers on repeat in my head: the number of weeks left of this chemo business (THREE), and 98.7%.

My cancer was stage 1a, 1.6 cm, estrogen receptor (ER) and her2 positive. The her2+ stuff is what makes it scary - that means it's aggressive and grows quickly and is more likely to metastasize than cancers which are not her2+. But! Now we have Herceptin, a targeted therapy that shuts down those her2 receptors and, so the internet and my oncologist claim, makes her2+ actually a desirable feature in many ways, because the treatment for it is so good. A wonder drug. 

Still, it's hard to trust it, right? 

So I click here and read this study a lot: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1406281

"We performed an uncontrolled, single-group, multicenter, investigator-initiated study of adjuvant paclitaxel (Taxol) and trastuzumab (Herceptin) in 406 patients with tumors measuring up to 3 cm in greatest dimension. Patients received weekly treatment with paclitaxel and trastuzumab for 12 weeks, followed by 9 months of trastuzumab monotherapy"

This is what I'm having.

"The median follow-up period was 4.0 years. The 3-year rate of survival free from invasive disease was 98.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 97.6 to 99.8). Among the 12 relapses seen, 2 were due to distant metastatic breast cancer. "

98.7% of women were alive and cancer-free after 3 years. That's a lot. Most, you might say. And only 2 of those women had it metastasize. That's like 0.5%. That's pretty good. The 3-year period might seem short, but her2+ cancers typically come back quickly, within 2 years, if they're going to come back. Mine is also estrogen positive, which can crop up again basically any time, but I guess I'm not too worried about that right now. I just want to get through the next 3 years. And maybe I will! 

It's funny, though, that when I see that I don't think, "I will probably be okay," but more like, "there is a slim chance that I might be okay." I've never felt safe hoping for the best, though. Better just prepare for the worst and then be pleasantly surprised, right?

98.7%, though. It's pretty good.