My ECOG is 1. What is that?

It is a score from 0 to 5 for how much the illness affects your ordinary day. Nought means you can do everything you did before. One means light activity is fine but hard work tires you. Two means you are up more than half the day but cannot work.

It describes what you can do, not how ill you look or how well you are coping. It changes in both directions. Ask your team for yours, because it often decides which treatments and which trials are open to you.

Written by two physicians. Checked against patient information from the US National Cancer Institute and Cancer Research UK.