by XKCD – Randall Munroe
This comic is the latest in an ongoing series in which the author chronicles his fiancé’s experience with illness and an uncertain remission. The parts of the comic in grey represent the previous iterations, titled Two Years and Seven Years. The comic deals with the tenuous temporalities of cancer by tracking the narrator’s wife through the timeline set out by her “survival chart”, and discussing their painful negotiations with the possibilities of the future. The comic also deals with the uncertainty of remission and the anxieties of relapse, particularly in the “seven years” section with the panel in which she insists the pain of a stubbed toe could be a sign a relapse. The comic’s humorous tone disguises the persistent anxiety felt by those in partial remission.
Full comic shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License