This treatment sounded like a much better risk and way to go than contemporary cancer treatments--I mean, as long as it was actually painless as described. You expect cancer to be fatal, and standard treatments just kill you more slowly but also rob you of any standard of life. If you could be treated while enjoying a decent standard of life and sometimes you die and turn into a plant, I would certainly sign up for that.
I enjoyed this one, but I guess I went into it expecting more of a resolution of some kind. Instead it just kind of felt like the story rose and rose before meandering to an eventual hault, much like the main character herself. Don't get me wrong, I don't intend that as a critique, because it was a very fitting ending in many ways. I guess I'm more saying that if anyone else, like me, initially had trouble with the pacing and the way the story just putters out at the end it might be worth a second listen approaching the very style of storytelling as a level of analogy for the life of the protagonist.
I get where you're coming from. I think it might've been more, like, a vignette than a short story, or something? By the time the story starts all the decisions have been made and we're just kindof seeing the part between the critical decision (to do this treatment) and the final resolution, despite the protagonist having very little agency after their choice to be treated. Sometimes this would bother me, but in this case I was interested in enough in this fantastical medical treatment that I was engrossed enough in that so that it didn't bother me.
