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Lessons from fighting cancer

August 9, 2023

Can’t compete on ideas, so will instead talk about experience.
I had a learning experience earlier this year that I wish I never had, but I still learnt lots of things.
My wife was diagnosed in bone cancer in her leg in late January. Spent January, February, March figuring out what to do.
Spoiler: she had the leg amputated, is recovering well.
There’s a chance of recurrence/metastasis that could show up sometime in the next decade, so we continue to be scan and prepared.

2020 has been a year of examining expertise, for everyone, and I learnt a lot about expertise.
I’ve prepared two separate experiences on the topic of expertise in the context of our cancer journey, hopefully I can squeeze them in

#1 about how the cancer doctors / system is screwing up re: best surgeries

#2 How expertise I thought I couldn’t gain in fact was very accessible.

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Story: System Failure – Amputation vs Not

In the absence of immediate feedback, wishful thinking from doctors and patients.

“There’s no survival difference”

“Maybe limb-salvage in fact has higher survival chance.”

Not much data!

< 1000 cases per year in US

Failure to Understand “More Dakka” / “Mask Fallacy”

(You + System) > System > You > Nada

Story #2: Accessible Expertise

Excerpt from MRI Report