No one knows exactly if your cancer will kill you sooner, or later, or not at all. There is the often broken five-year test of time, there are statistics and prognoses and studies, there are oncologists, radiologists, surgeons, and social workers; there are articles in the New York Times and the New England Journal of Medicine that often contradict each other.
BREAKING! This just in: the economy is terrible and the country is suffering its worst jobs crisis since the Depression... developing... Of course, this isn't actually breaking news, it's aching news -- and before the tragic bombings in Boston, the most important story going on. But you wouldn't have known that if you'd been listening to the media, where the economy and the long-term jobs disaster that's been enveloping the country for five years goes virtually unmentioned. Only 88,000 new jobs were produced last month. And for the long-term unemployed, the situation is verging on hopeless. It's hard to imagine our jobs disaster will get the attention -- and the solutions -- it deserves if our media doesn't think it's a story worth telling. Perhaps we need to come up with an alternate term to the breathless "BREAKING" tag. How about "BROKEN"?