Hope For Holly

Late at night, when I’m having trouble sleeping, I try to do big math problems in my head. It helps me clear my mind of the dilemmas of the day and I usually fall asleep before I can figure them out. Examples of big math problems include things like how many compressed DVD’s can I fit on a terabit NAS server (833 assuming a 1:3 compression ratio going to Divx for all you geeks, but what if I use 500GB for fail over backup?) or how many sugar cubes could fit in our house (the hard part is figuring out the cubic area of the house) and so on. I know, it is nerdy, but I don’t usually figure out the answers before I fall asleep.

The one that I’ve been wrestling with the last week or so is what are really the odds of all of this happening? So, for your amusement and enjoyment, I’ve figured it out. Since I’ll be using NIH numbers and the numbers that our doctors have given us, I’ll use a US population basis. For international readers, I trust you can figure out it some late night when you can’t sleep. Here is what I’ve got so far:

- US Population: 300 million
- Number of new cases of colo-rectal cancer per year: 153,000
- Only 10% of all cases are in people under 50: 15,300
- No documentation on the % of patients diagnosed at stage III or higher (major surgery required) - Since people under 50 are probably less inclined to get checked out early on, let’s call this 50%. It is probably higher, but it is a good even number: 7,650 per year
- % whose body will reject the ostomy / surgery: 3% / 229 people
- % whose incision gets infected: 30% / 68 people

Yes, you read that right. Holly’s incision became infected a week ago. No problem says our doctor, just clean it out every night, stick some gauze in there and let it heal. Let me just say that this isn’t a superficial wound that I’m cleaning out. I’m cool with scraped knees and ostomy bags, but when you’re talking about a 3/4″ deep hole in someones stomach, I get a bit squeamish. Holly pulled the gauze out of her incision, I about chucked. She was pulling it out like a magician pulls scarves out of his sleeve. It just kept coming out. No problem, just keep folding the gauze and jam it in there with a Q-tip. Double gross.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. Math problems and filling incisions with gauze. The good news is that the incision is getting shallower and shallower. Holly is slowly but steadily getting her strength back. We walked around the block last night. We went for sushi tonight. She is slowly gaining weight and the plumbing is going in the right direction, albeit slowly. We were anticipating that for about 6 - 8 weeks, though.

Finally, for those who are curious, the odds of what Holly has going on are a lot better than I thought. Only 1 in 4,411,764. Seems fairly common now. In doing the quick math, there should be 68 other people in the US that are probably going through the exact same thing. I wonder if there is a Facebook group for Stage III / IV, under 50, colo-rectal cancer patients who have had complications with surgery and incisions? Probably hard to get funding for a company using that business plan.

For those keeping score, the chances and odds of weird things happening are as follows:

- Chance of winning California’s Mega Million Lottery: 1 in 175,711,156 (save your money and put it towards retirement)
- Chance of dying in a vehicle accident: 1 in 78
- Chance of dying from falling off of a bed / chair: 1 in 4,473
- Chance of death by poisonous snake: 1 in 1,874,034
- Odds of getting a hole in one: 5,000 to 1 (still hasn’t happened to me yet)
- Odds of being considered possessed by satan: 7,000 to 1
- Odds of being audited by the IRS: 175 to 1
- Chance of dying from a shark attack: 1 in 300,000,000
- Chance you will get Mad Cow Disease: 1 in 40,000,000
- Chance you’ll get colo-rectal cancer in your lifetime: 1 in 26

So get checked out.

That is enough math for me tonight. I’m going to bed.

Odds numbers from Funny2.