I hadn’t ever considered (prior to today) that doctors have an important commonality with weathermen: neither can give an accurate forecast.
Consider: weathermen are very often wrong with their predictions. Likewise, my mother’s doctor was unwilling to answer the question, “How long do I have to live?” with any specificity. It seems that often, their predictions are also incorrect… and he’s the first one to admit it.
About the best he could give was survival percentages for certain time ranges, i.e.: less than 10% survive for five years… or even for one year. Conversely, mom could also be here with us for another 2 or 3 years.
To me, it sounds just like a 30% chance of rain, and a 30% chance of sun, forecast for the same day.