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.
 Seeing this possibility evaporate filled me with a sense of powerlessness and hopelessness that many people feel after being initially diagnosed but that I never experienced.  I have never accepted the statistics about my cancer - it would be awfully hard to feel optimistic if I did.  I felt that numbers let me know what I was up against not what my outcome would be.  I am nothing if not stubborn and I felt determined to overcome this through force of will.  Of course, it is not that simple but I have so much in my favor - Steph and Walter's love and support, excellent doctors, friends and colleagues the world over pulling for me - I had that strong sense that through all of this, I would just grit my teeth and do whatever I could to to get better.  Not exactly Pollyanna but certainly an optimistic vision.  Cancer can rob you of the sense you have of control of your life but I didn't feel the sting of that until I was pronounced unfit to return to Australia.
No final decision will be made until my next scan the middle of March but we are now preparing to return to D.C. and begin a new job search.  A few scenarios were floated as possibilities, including the ominous sounding "medical retirement" but the most likely outcome is a medical curtailment from Australia and a reassignment to Washington.  This would be our ninth move in four years which is a pretty blistering pace even by State Department standards.  Once again, time to adjust our perspective and embrace the change even if isn't exactly what we wanted.
I never really wanted a brain tumor either but here we are.