Happy Anniversary

It is hard to believe that it has been a year since we snapped this picture in front of our house in Canberra before we hopped in a rented car (our hastily packed nine suitcases somehow crammed in there) and headed for Sydney and home.  Looking back, I now realize what a complete altered state I was living in for the next six weeks.  Brain cancer, brain surgery, chemotherapy - the kind of words that make you do a double take - is this real?  Did I hear that correctly?  I was fortunate enough to have never had a serious illness in my life and so nothing compelled me to think about it too much.

Brain Tumor Ride

No, we are not going to use Walt as child labor during the Brain Tumor Ride in Palo Alto (I'm not sure if he is up for 50 miles but I know he would give it a go).
We've been looking for a way to become more personally involved in raising money and awareness of brain cancer and the Brain Tumor Ride in October seemed like the perfect way for us to do that.  The National Brain Tumor Society is an excellent organization and has been a great resource for both of us over the past year.

Fierce Ambivalence

"But Roseman had also spent a sleepless night, brooding over the Perry Mason television show the evening before, which his wife was fond of but toward which Roseman cherished a fierce ambivalence, wanting at once to be a successful trial lawyer like Perry Mason and, since this was impossible, to destroy Perry Mason by undermining him."
Thomas Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49
I had my MRI yesterday and saw my neuro-oncologist.  After standing for over an hour on a combo of MUNI buses headed to China Basin (hacking fellow passengers everywhere - anyone seen Contagion yet?), I arrived late for my MRI.  They pushed me back forty minutes but were able to get me in.

All Cancers Are Not Created Equal

Last week, I found myself with some time to kill at the Hellen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCSF's Mt. Zion Campus.  It is one of 39 centers around the country specially designated by the National Cancer Institute as institution that provides "laboratory, clinical, and population-based research, with substantial transdisciplinary research that bridges these scientific areas."  This is essentially where you want to be if you need cancer treatment in the United States.