I find myself surrounded by numbers\u2026I try to get away from it, and yet I land smack dab in the middle of numbers. I\u2019m in the business of people and yet I recognize that this book is going to be crucial to my studies and surprisingly is one I am glad I purchased, and I plan to dip back in on a deeper level as it directly affects my NPO and the work I do.\u00a0 In hospice work and in healthcare numbers are everywhere, and it will affect all of us the older we get.\u00a0 Your weight, your height, your blood pressure and all the labs, your pain level\u2026your white blood cell count.\u00a0 As you may guess, by the time someone comes to be in contact with me they have encountered so, so, so many numbers and mostly find with all those numbers they have lost HOPE!\u00a0 Are numbers and hope friends or foe?<\/p>\n
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I\u2019m going to tell you my first encounter with death.\u00a0 A week before one of my best friends in college was going to graduate college with honors, she went into the hospital for a biopsy as they thought maybe she had mono and wanted to make sure her swollen lymph node was nothing. Well, it wasn\u2019t nothing it was Hodgkin\u2019s Lymphoma. Anecdotally, this is what they (medical community) say is the most \u201ccurable\u201d cancer for a young person to get! That was a dose of hope we all appreciated!\u00a0 In fact, \u201cthe problem comes when you start using anecdotes in situations where things are more predictable-where the distribution of events isn\u2019t straightforward\u201d [1].\u00a0 \u00a0Hope comes from the generality of what the majority of patients experience through these anecdotes, that are most likely based on real numbers. The hope of cure came because 95%<\/strong> of patients who have this cancer are cured after one round of radiation.\u00a0 My friend, Tristen, did not respond to radiation, so she landed in the 5%.<\/strong> \u00a0Okay, that happens, but guess what here comes real hope again, of the 5%<\/strong> who fail radiation, 99%<\/strong> of that 5%<\/strong> are cured through chemotherapy.\u00a0 We had hope with our friend for 3<\/strong> years through chemo after chemo and stem cell transplants.\u00a0 I got the call right after Christmas 2003,<\/strong> that her last transplant didn\u2019t work and there was nothing left to do.\u00a0 She moved on with hospice, and here I am supporting my 25-year-old<\/strong> friend as she married her boyfriend and died 3 <\/strong>months later.\u00a0 I have a lot of regret, and I\u2019ve learned so much by working through those numbers that seemed \u201chopeless\u201d, even now 20<\/strong> years later, her faithfulness and hope continue to have a lasting impact on my and are part of my \u201cWhy\u201d I work in hospice.<\/p>\n \n How many of us have faced the \u201codds\u201d? Honestly, we all have, we just survived a pandemic, but did we? Or has our life changed, has our hope been recreated into something new because our reality has changed?\u00a0 Goodhart\u2019s law seems to really explain how our mindset and definition of hope maybe changed based on the metrics, this law states \u201cthat when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric\u201d [2] \u00a0I cannot think of anything that speaks to hope from a numbers perspective more than that, did we change or did our perspective on our hope change? I had a professor once talk about the difference between hope and hopes.\u00a0 Hope is a deep profound way of being especially when we have a savior who gifts us eternal life and forgiveness and grace.\u00a0 Hopes are the little things that we \u201chope\u201d will happen, such as I hope I get a good grade on this blog.\u00a0 I hope I don\u2019t get chosen in class to critique this blog, or I hope it doesn\u2019t rain, or even as big as hoping this round of chemotherapy works!\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it amazing how much hopes change, in Goodhart\u2019s law, we change the \u201chopes\u201d we have as we move through situations and things that are out of our control.<\/p>\n \n Hospice is all about numbers, and in the middle of that are families and patients who feel they have \u201clost the battle with the numbers\u201d and are now often times hopeless, and going to die.\u00a0 We have real opportunity in medicine to make huge differences in people\u2019s lives, especially when we can work at a macro level.\u00a0 We can have great sample sizes [3], statistical significance [4] and causality [5]and effect [6], and all the theories that black and white numbers give us\u2026and yet we fall into the 1% of the 5% with whom this or that works, where can we find hope? I do think numbers give us hopes, but our \u201cHope comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth\u201d Psalms 121:2.<\/p>\n \n My friend Tristen was interviewed for a radio show during her cancer journey and it inspired a book by this radio show host.\u00a0 Here is the transcript of the end of this interview:<\/p>\n \n (host) Tristen, what would you say to people who are battling serious illnesses right now? What advice would you give?<\/p>\n (Tristen) They need Christ and prayer. The combination produces joy and hope. Hopefully, friends and family will raise their spirits.\u00a0 If they\u2019re all alone, I suggest calling a local church and talking to a minister. The hope is there if they reach out for it.<\/p>\n (Host) What you\u2019re telling us is there is hope in what might be considered hopeless?<\/p>\n (Tristen) Even if a situation ends in death, there\u2019s still hope.\u00a0 I know that I\u2019m going to spend eternity with Christ. There is nothing sad about it. It\u2019s amazing! [7]<\/p>\n \n Wise words from someone too young to die and who had every reason to be bitter and angry about her situation.\u00a0 The \u201cnumbers\u201d did not work out for her (though they did keep up spirits and hope for all of us) they also didn\u2019t lie\u2026nothing was 100%, except that she loved Jesus and her faith never faltered and has ripple effects even to this day.\u00a0 So\u2026 did I prove number and hope are friends or foe?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know, I think it\u2019s friends and<\/strong> foe. We need them, medicine needs them, but what do we do when the \u201codds\u201d are not in our favor? What do you think?<\/p>\n \n [1] Chivers, Tom and Chiver, David. How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Stats in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them). <\/em>London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2022 (16).<\/p>\n \n [2] Ibid, 158<\/p>\n \n [3] Ibid, 35<\/p>\n \n [4] Ibid, 21<\/p>\n \n [5] Ibid, 55<\/p>\n \n [6] Ibid, 43<\/p>\n \n [7] Dahmen, Jerry. I Love Life: The Real Survivors: 50 stories of Faith, Hope and Inspiration. <\/em>Sioux Falls, SD. Pine Hill Press, 2005, 101.<\/p>\n \n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I find myself surrounded by numbers\u2026I try to get away from it, and yet I land smack dab in the middle of numbers. I\u2019m in the business of people and yet I recognize that this book is going to be crucial to my studies and surprisingly is one I am glad I purchased, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":187,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2519,2608,2076,177],"class_list":["post-30974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-camacho-dlgp02","tag-hospice","tag-chivers","tag-hope","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/187"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30975,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30974\/revisions\/30975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}