Why do I keep doing this to myself?

The trouble with looking stuff up on the web and then reading it is, occasionally, you can take it out of context, don't understand what it is actually saying, or be skilled enough to read exactly what it is getting at.

There is a great deal of stuff out there and I come across new bits of information all the time. What I did today was to follow someone's link to a presentation which was a little depressing as it has figures that looked, to me, far more pessimistic than I'd been led to believe the success rate was for BCG treatment. I certainly don't like the idea of "highly likely" tumour recurrences - that would put me off - but apparently that does happen a lot. I'm kind of hoping that I'll get maintenance but even that doesn't rule out getting more tumours.

The other problem is how do you interpret the statistics - they are probably normalised somehow but who is actually "normal"?

So - try not to do too much of this without putting it in perspective. I do have to admit though that having read this latest one I feel quite down. That won't last longer than an hour or so and I'll be alright again but it can be a shock to the system to read facts and figures. You do need to find out the data behind it and also read some of the things like sample size to start to realise that some is good science and the other stuff, due to the small sample, could be out by a long way.