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I’d already written most of this post before relaying to a friend how this past week has been for me, but in the midst of that conversation knew I would need to go back and change the title I’d already given this melancholic scrawling. I am nothing if not a little bit dramatic. First, I…

What I’ve been up to this month A few folks have noticed the decline of my writing output this month, and reached out via other avenues to check in. I’m very appreciative of that, primarily because though I can see certain metrics for views, email opens, etc., unless folks are directly liking or commenting posts…

I’m sitting in the waiting area of the cancer centre pharmacy. It’s -11°C outside, but inside it’s roasting. Also inside me, I guess, since I have a fever. Not a terrible fever, but enough to make the coloured light on the thermometer change from green to yellow when displaying the numbers. Enough that I had…

I write this as a nurse a mouth burned by ginger tea as the large Yeti mug has betrayed me. I drink the tea because my pneumonia cough has returned, and possibly the pneumonia. But we’ll see in a few days I suppose. I keep seeing posts that review peoples’ years: skills gained, books read,…

I told you this wouldn’t always be a gloomy place This won’t be a long post, but one to break the monotony of waiting. My PET scan was on Monday, and this morning my wife and I talked to my oncologist about the results. The short version is: we’re not yet to full remission. The…

A short reflection This is now the second Advent where question marks hang about my mortality. Lent is a little easier to grapple with in this condition. Advent offers something of a reversal: Jesus chose to be human? He could’ve revealed God’s ineffable nature to us in any form, but opted for the same susceptible…

The slow march toward mid-December A life update Here I sit in my bed, decaf coffee in hand, remembering the days when caffeine fuelled my mornings as I commuted to my office at the university to hunker down for a day of chaplaining. That’s the technical term, in case you didn’t know. I miss caffeine.…

Or: memento vivere I just realized, maybe for the first time, that depending on the emphasis with which one reads the title phrase of this post, I could either be simply using a common phrase with some assumed grammar (“if you don’t hear any news from me, things are going well”)—or making a weighty statement…

This is a bit of a winding post, forgive me… This morning, thanks to Technology, I was able to remotely attend the funeral mass of Greg Hillis, who passed away from cholangiocarcinoma. It was a bit surreal since I never spent much time with Greg in-person (and since it is always theologically awkward to observe…

And still get lodged in your throat, probably I’ve crawled out of the oncology inpatient ward, muttering “IT IS COLD IN THE WINTER”, clutching pills of various sizes and counts, reclaiming the divot of my bed as my Throne of Illness. (“It is cold in the winter”, besides being a certain type of passive construction…