Once you’ve been on the losing side of great odds, you never find statistics comforting again.
When I found out my son had a serious disease while I was 24 weeks pregnant with him, I was reading an Emily Oster book called Expecting Better that used statistics to make pregnant women feel better about doing things that we have been warned against. I immediately stopped reading it as I realized that statistics meant nothing anymore. Statistically, my son should have been normal. Statistically, the likelihood of him being affected by his disease was 1 in 50,000. Yet, he had it and it took him away from me. I am now a statistic. One in four.
