I've been reading survival statistics and they're pretty grim but I keep seeing posts from people who are years out from diagnosis and doing okay. My husband was diagnosed Stage II peritoneal in November and I need to know what we're actually dealing with here.
I found a study from 2023 that tracked 1,200 meso patients and about 35% were still alive at five years, which sounds better than the 12-18 month median you see quoted everywhere. But that's if you get treated, right? And treated at the right place?
The thing that confuses me is when people say "meso is always fatal" because technically yes, it can metastasize and it's aggressive, but I'm seeing guys on here who had diagnosis dates in 2019 or 2020 and they're posting in 2025. That's not nothing.
I know stage matters. I know surgery matters. I know whether you can tolerate chemo matters. But I'm trying to figure out if there's a real subset of people where this thing doesn't actually kill them in a year or two, or if those people are just the statistical outliers and I'm setting us up for false hope.
Does anyone have data on what actually correlates with longer survival? I've got his pathology report and I'm tracking his CA-125 numbers, so I can look at specifics if that helps.