#WorldCancerDay

02/04/17 - Today, February 4th, 2017, is #WorldCancerDay. This day is near & dear to my heart, because not only am I a recent high grade cancer survivor, my grandpa is a two-time cancer survivor, my grandma, great grandma, first love, best friend's mom & a coworker all died of cancer. So, for me, it's personal.

Each year 12.7 million people around the world discover they have cancer. 7.6 million people die of cancer each year worldwide. In 2016, it was estimated that there would be 202,400 new cases of cancer and 78,800 deaths from cancer in Canada during that year alone. Broken down further, on average, 539 Canadians are diagnosed with cancer each day and 214 Canadians die daily of cancer. Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada and is responsible for 30% of all deaths.

Although survival rates for all cancers combined at the five-year mark are 60%, only one third of cancer cases can be "cured" if caught early enough, leaving the remaining two thirds to face metastasis, recurrence or distant metastasis. The five-year disease specific survival rate (i.e. not dying from the disease) for lung cancer is 17%, whereas prostate cancer and breast cancer are 95% and 87% respectively. For soft tissue sarcomas (of which there are 50-70 subtypes, including liposarcoma), the five-year survival rate is 56%. With extremity round cell myxoid liposarcoma (the kind that I had), the five year survival rate is estimated to be 60% (as confirmed by my oncologist and several liposarcoma nomograms but estimates range from 57% to 74% depending on which study you read...#ChallengesOfHavingARareCancer). It drops down to 50% at the 10 year mark, whereas in contrast, the 10 year survival rate is 83% for breast cancer and 98% for prostate cancer if non-metastatic at the time of first diagnosis.

Over the past few years, deaths from cancer across Canada have gone down, but there's still a long way to go. Here's hoping that one day there will be a cure for ALL cancers, not just the more common ones but the rare ones, as well.

References:
www.cancer.ca
www.cancer.net
www.cancer.org
www.mskcc.org/nomograms/sarcoma
www.sarculator.com
www.sarcomahelp.org


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