[2022-10-17] Slow and steady
Last Thursday, I received my latest CA125 result. It was another 8. Normal. Safe. Nothing to see here.
I wasn't sure whether I should share it and, if so, how. "Is it a story if there's no conflict?" I wondered.
If The Write Practice is to be believed:
Conflict is necessary for all stories. It doesn’t matter what kind of story it is—novel, short story, mystery, romance, thriller, children’s, adult—it will always need conflict. In order to keep the plot interesting and exciting, some type of conflict must be there.
But my CA125 result—no matter how reassuring it is to me personally and to those who care about me—doesn't entail conflict. Does the lack of struggle render the story uninteresting?
I'm reminded of Aesop's fable of The Tortoise and the Hare. The story wouldn't be captivating if it were simply about the Tortoise and its slow and steady progress toward its goal. Similarly, when cancer is in remission, the conflict is lessened and is perhaps felt internally more than expressed externally. Remission is like the nap the Hare takes, which allows the Tortoise to simply get on with the race.
So my 23rd month with a normal CA125 may not be a story. Perhaps it's little more than a fragment of my month. After all, I spend just a few minutes every four weeks at the Cancer Centre giving my blood, then waiting several hours before receiving the result on my phone.
The thing about cancer is that those of us touched by this disease don't run the race once and then move on, having proved our point to the Hare that the race is not always to the swift. For many of us, monitoring continues for months and years. I hold my breath for a few seconds every time I access my monthly test result, hoping that the Hare will remain asleep and that I will win the race—at least until the next month.
So even if my CA125 result is a tiny occurrence in my month, I think it is worth sharing. As screenwriter Lena Waithe said: "I’m writing my story so that others might see fragments of themselves." Many of us have Hares in our lives that threaten to play spoiler: the ADHD we struggle with every day, the depression that's never far away, the chronic pain that's undiagnosed or untreated, the waitlist that delays a medical procedure, the worries that seem insurmountable. Perhaps as we cheer on the Tortoise, we cheer on ourselves, and every story of slow and steady progress gives us hope.
