Glass of Dirt

This has become part of my daily ritual (a twice daily ritual actually), drinking my "glass of dirt" as Walt has dubbed it.  It is part of the Traditional Chinese Medicine treatment which has been an important tool in my cancer fight.

If you are wondering, it looks like dirt and it tastes like dirt so Walt is a pretty astute observer.

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.

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.  

Devouring or Devoured?

I thought it was time to rename the blog.  Keeping Up with Chris, Steph, and Walt Van Bebber has done the job admirably since we started this last January when simple and literal seemed appropriate.  Getting overly  precious about what we called it just didn't feel right at the time.  But recently it's just seemed a bit too bland and descriptive - like a folder we have in the file cabinet labeled "Taxes 2006" or "Moscow Receipts."
I found out not too long ago that one of my oldest friends called me the "Devouring Mind" in high school I think mostly because I was curious about and interested in everything and I just had a burning desire to know and discover things.

Heading "Home"

It looks like on Sunday the three of us will be boarding a plane bound for Sydney and heading back to our house in Canberra and my job at the Embassy.  The last few days have been a Through The Looking Glass inversion of our last few in Australia.  Fours days ago, it just did not appear to be a realistic possibility that I would be medically cleared to return to Australia.  Now that I've had a few days to process this and let it sink in,  I  couldn't be happier.

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.