Numbers as Narrative

Abstract

Staging numbers powerfully shape breast cancer narratives. Used by physicians to tell women about their breast cancer diagnoses, these numbers are integral to treatment decision-making. In women's calculus of survival, staging numbers portend hope and dread; they speak to how much lifetime remains. Drawing on 92 interviews with breast cancer survivors in California, the author argues that staging numbers represent, and function as, a form of illness narrative. Similar to more traditional illness narratives, they impart meaning to the cancer experience; they create order and temporal orientation. Numbers also offer women a way of negotiating possible alternative narrative endings. However, numbers do not capture the richness of lived experience and are, therefore, limited guides to treatment decision-making. Physicians can learn from cancer survivors' understandings of staging numbers how to communicate prognoses more effectively; they can become better collaborators in constructing narratives that focus on living a life, and not the fear of life's ending.