2 stories. and waiting.

last monday night (day of the mri) or should i say tuesday morning i find myself still chasing sleep at 2:30 am. this was, most likely, due to the two cups of coffee i had consumed after dinner combined with a little "wait n'worry" anxiety. i swear i don't know why i do either. so after all of our viewable six chanels go into info-mercial overdrive i decide to see what's on channel 13, a pbs channel. by the texture and format of the program i conclude that it's a documentary film. i'm immediately relieved that i have found something that will consume the time that sleep refuses to embrace. "A Ring of their Own" becomes an engaging story of Ann-Marie Saccurato and Angel Bovee, two young lesbian boxers in a male driven arena. the film unveils a path of determination and passions so driven that it propels these women through personal and social struggles. their mental and physical commitment to nurture their passion for the sport of boxing is bold and- dare i say it because it sounds so cheesy- inspirational and get-off-my-arse moving. the film works it's way up to a particular fight between WBC light-weight world champion Saccurato and two-time world champion Jelena Mrdjenovich in Mrdjenovich’s hometown of Edmonton, Canada.. aside from seeing Laila Ali on "Dancing with the stars" this was my introduction to women's boxing and it's still unclear if i'll be able to call myself an avid fan anytime in the near future but i'm not ruling it out either. we can keep an eye on Angel and Ann-Marie's progress here.

so with sleep still having no interest in me at all, i waited to see what film would follow that edge-of-your-seat-10-round fight between Ann Marie and Jelena. now, i'm notorious for coincidentally picking up the right book to read or going to see just the right movie that seems to be a perfect psychological fit for my mood. and i'm always amazed when i look up just in time to witness the glide of a single bird in an otherwise empty sky. it's those moments that are just meant to intersect. well, the next film that came on was the perfect companion to "A ring of Their Own" and simply right for my 'waiting for mri results" mind. stories about life. real living and moving forward despite anything. just moving forward into the days with nothing but everything alloted to you.

what reeled next was "So Much So Fast", a film about Stephen Heywood, a 29 year old man diagnosed with ALS. this documentary film compresses a five year witness to Stephen and his army of family and friends. after Stephen is diagnosed the race is on- to live life and find, discover, and ambitiously explore the possibilities for a cure. unlike "A Ring of Their Own" i knew how this story would inevitabley end. having started reading brain hell an ongoing four year old blog written by a man living with ALS, i know that there is, still, no cure. however, what i didn't know was how far into Stephen's fatal prognosis the film would go.

it wasn't the cliche reference of the 'fight' in the first film nor the potentially simplistic implication of a 'fight for life' illusion that can sufocate the true heroics of the second film that claimed my viewing of these two documentaries as seredepitous. in both films, it was, the presence of raw, tangible necessity to move forward despite and/or in the face of realities.

some time during these films this thought occured to me; while either anxiously waiting the outcome of Ann-Marie's Edmonton fight or witnessing Stephen's oncoming reality i realized that even though i did not yet have knowledge of their outcomes- the end of both stories already existed. if i were to turn the television off during either film the outcome would not change- i simply would not know it. in this weird cerebral process i realized that the same held true for my mri results- that as i lay there in bed the reality of the results already existed. even if the diagnostic report was not yet on some desk in the "call patient" pile the results, in fact, existed in my body- either i have cancer again or i don't- one or the other is already a reality simply waiting to be unveiled. unchangeable. no one just "gets" cancer. it is present for a long while before it can actually be observed and diagnosed as a seeable threat. i didn't know what to do with this concept. if i took the 'it doesn't matter- it is what is so i might as well move forward with a clean bill of health' attitude i risked being deceived. but if i worried and imagined all the possible cell stages and treatments i would be a miserable human being to be with only to risk wasting valuable time after discovering the coast is actually clear to head back into the hills of illusionville. in either case i did find unusual surrendered comfort knowing that there was absolutely nothing i could do to stop whatever reality was mine. and in either case i will, like most of us, continue to live in the "systemic denial of approaching reality" whether that be cancer or really really old age.

as of monday 4.16.07:
mri results are in... "FINE". no evidence of cancer.