Over the past few weeks, someone in my immediate family was diagnosed with cancer. A rapid surgery was arranged and a very small tumor was successfully removed last week.

Today we got the post-op results and overall they (plus the pre-op MRI) have been good -- Stage 1, clean margins, no detected spreading. The only hiccup is the tumor itself had a lot of protein receptors on it, which basically means it was primed to kick into high gear and grow quickly when prompted by something common in our bodies. Translation: the post-operation steps are critical to preventing a recurrence, because if any cancer cells are left they could rapidly grow.

The next step is post-op radiation and treatment with a relatively successful drug that targets this specific protein. This has all moved so fast that a lot of it hasn't sunk-in for a lot of us. One of the frustrating items for my family member is a lot of the literature about this particular drug touts the high disease-free survival rate relative to non-treatment. But that's just a relative rate, not an underlying survival rate with treatment.

So I dug deep into as much material as I could find to see that the 5-year disease free rate is basically 10%. I have a gut response here, but I'm curious to know if people think I should be passing-along this info to my immediate family member. 10% sounds low, and I have no idea if it's actually low. Getting my family members to stay positive is a priority, and I'm 100% sure this knowledge won't change their course of action because they are definitely doing this treatment (and it has very low likelihood of bad side effects).

So what do people think?