Perhaps the most important thing to understand is statistics – whether for cancer or health in general. In my case, they could have gone something like this: assume you have a 70% chance of survival (defined as no recurrence for five years) if you simply have the tumor removed.
而对此最需要了解的东西，很可能就是统计数据——不管针对癌症还是总体健康状况而言。在我这个病例中，他们可能会这样做：假设你在切除肿瘤后有70%的存活率（5年内不复发）。放疗和化疗还能将复发概率额外降低30%。这个数字看上去很乐观，直到你意识到这意味着你的“生存”概率只会增加9%，从70%到79%，因为复发概率是30%，减掉其中30%，还有21%。