Mourning

It has been a long week.  I've reached the end of my radiation treatment - just one more session tomorrow morning and I'm done - but I don't feel particularly celebratory or relieved.  The past week has left me in a deep state of mourning and reflection.

One Step

 It has been a very compressed couple of days.  Time slowed down a bit as I waited to hear the conclusions of the tumor board and get the call from my doctor.  Yet I have to say, it was very different from Wednesday.  The shock was gone and I just wanted some information that would help me focus on the next step - what can we do next and when will we do it?

Handshakes

Last week, the friends and colleagues I entered the Foreign Service with (the 133rd class of A-100 "Standing and Clapping") hit another milestone on the road of a State Department career as "handshakes" went out for everyone's third assignment.

The first milestone, in my opinion, is the opening day on A-100 when we all collectively and without much pomp and circumstance (standing in the lobby of FSI) swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Crazy news!

If you can believe it the State Department gave us an option today to return to Canberra.  They called our oncologist and heard from her how well she thought Chris was doing on chemo and that she couldn't predict how long he would remain stable, that she thought there was no reason he couldn't work at full capacity and that she thought the care in Australia was good. She told him she would remain his primary oncologist and that we could continue to be seen by her even if virtually. All this changed the State Department's mind and despite saying he would highly recommend against going back that we would have that option.

Is February really the shortest month?

...because it has felt interminable.
To begin, I'm still feeling healthy.  It has been close to three months that I've been free from acute symptoms.  We started the month thinking that if the next scan showed improvement or even stable disease, we could head back to Australia, get back to my job, and regain a semblance of normal life.  After several weeks of back and forth with the State Department, it now appears that I won't be medically cleared to return overseas and I don't have much input on this.  In some ways, these last two weeks have been harder to take than my original diagnosis.  I suppose I didn't realize the extent to which I had equated returning to my job in Australia with having turned the corner with my cancer - somehow that was the milestone in my mind that would turn our upside down life right again.

When and how did this all start?

We began noticing that something was up around the time we returned to Washington for training after our posting to Yekaterinburg, Russia in March of 2010. I felt exhausted and could never catch up and feel rested. Given the circumstances - a mid-winter move from the edge of Siberia to a demanding training schedule at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington - it didn't seem too unusual and we just plowed ahead.