I apologize in advance if this week's topic is a little dark or morbid, but sometimes my mind goes "there." Not out of concern but more out of curiosity - fueled by a monthly cocktail of dexamethasone and chemotherapy. Let's just get right to it.
By definition: natural selection is the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more "survival-equipped" offspring. The theory of its action is now believed to be the main process that brings about evolution. As applied to my personal health circumstance, if not for the various diagnostic capabilities and treatment interventions of modern oncology, I could have perished from my Multiple Myeloma (MM).
In the short history of the disease, less than 50 years ago, the 5-year survival rate for people diagnosed with MM was 23.7%. That meant that in 1976, only 23 out of every 100 people who were identified with MM at that time would have lived past 5 years. Multiple Myeloma survival rates have more than doubled since then with a current 5-year relative survival rate of almost 58% for every 100 people found to be suffering from MM (and by the way, living with a strain of cancer for which there still is no defined cure).
In the face of a life with cancer, I acknowledge the good fortune that I have had throughout my journey thus far - having experienced the benefits of: a relatively early diagnosis (at a statistically young age); an otherwise healthy body (carrying no comorbidities, which aided in the speed and quality of my rebound from the disease); near optimal responses at each of the various stages of my treatment (chemo to stem cell to recovery to remission to maintenance); very few adverse reactions or side effects from the variety of medications that I have been given (causing no setbacks or sidetracks along the continuum of my therapeutic path); and the simple fact that I am alive.
Granted I am not a slow antelope who is chased down and killed by a lion - thereby ending passing along of my strain of slow genes to a next generation of antelope. And although the genetic mutations that cause MM are acquired and not inherited, family history is a known risk factor for Multiple Myeloma (albeit very small - kids). Through the wonders of modern medicine, I now have attained more than 6+ years of survival (and counting and counting and counting), and have beaten the odds behind Darwin's theory - thus changing the course of my personal trajectory of natural selection.
