hello world...
My name is Christina.
One year ago today I found I had breast cancer.
Today, as far as I know, I'm cancer-free.
At least no less cancer-free than most everyone I know.
Looking back on my first entry from over a year ago, I see how the spaces have filled between who I was going in and who I've become these twelve months later. My sense of time has changed. Life is being lived more in the now with small doses of three-week cycles. Fluency has grown in the languages of "patient" and "cancer" but there are still concepts here and there that remain slippery, tricky little devils. Words like cancer-free or remission come to mind. They sound so important, something worth driving towards. But with a bit of poking, the curtain pulls back and the story gets a little more interesting.
After a year of living with this experience I now know that cancer-free isn't quite the right way to think about it. Cancer, like life, is more of a game of percentages than of absolutes. In this moment, yes, more or less, I'm cancer-free. There could be cells in there. They could be replicating. Hard to say. And with every year that passes, the chances of recurrence decrease. Will there ever be a 0% chance that I won't ever have cancer again? Likely not. Well unless, of course, we count death. But why go there? This is not that kind of conversation. Instead it's a conversation about the stories we hold onto and tell ourselves to create meaning and value. We look for guard rails, stable ground, definitions, and milestones. We do this because the reality and magnitude of impermanence and the moment may be just too much or too tenuous to handle.
"So Garrett, when do I go into remission? And what is remission anyway? When do you tell me that I've crossed over the divide? When do I pull out the balloons?" Translation: When is this moment done and I get to check the I am now safe box?
"Actually, you've been in remission basically since about the time we met last year, and we started you on chemo. Remission is really just three months, more or less, past the point when we no longer have any visible signs of cancer. All the chemo and radiation--we consider that all to be preventative measures. Two years after we finish the Herceptin treatments we consider your chances of a return to be at 3%. As the years progress they lower to about 1.75%. If we were to stick you on a bus full of people today, statistically speaking, you are the least likely person on that bus to have cancer." Translation: No check boxes. No absolutes. What matters is now.
Don't get me wrong, I believe a future exists. And I believe there are ways to influence the percentages going in my favor. But instead of focusing on getting to a 100%, to a goal, to a state change, or even an identity, my interest and attention is shifting to what is now. It is infinitely more gratifying and fascinating and a hell of a lot less work.
Living in a culture where goal-setting and making it to the next level saturates every view and conversation, being in the moment without focusing on future implications is no easy thing. I'm drinking the kool-aid but don't think for a second transcendence has arrived. But I get taste of it and it's beautiful. The cancer ride is showing me that milestones and goals, however important and real they may seem are also myths, the stories we tell, to define ourselves and create a ground that feels more comfortable and knowable than floating in the moment.
Good stuff this is.
