Dylan's Brain Cancer JOurney

Chapter 52: Past and Present in Paris               Sometime in October I receive a text from Spencer asking if I want to go to Broadway in New York early November. Planning with Spencer is easy, so we quickly make plans for the first week of November and get tickets to both Waitress and Hadestown. We would be in New York in a little under a month.               A couple days later my aunt emails. She and my uncle are in Paris and invite me to join them for a week or so if I’m able. There’s a blank spot in my schedule in roughly one and a half weeks right before the now-planned New York trip. I confirm that the dates work and buy some surprisingly inexpensive tickets to Paris.               I learn later why my flights were cheap: they were operated by American. On the way there, airline r...

  Rediscovering music; old self: Around the middle of October 2021, without work as a physician, I began to lose a sense of purpose. Although through writing I still felt that I was making some minor contribution; anything small to prove to the world my existence. I signed up for various volunteer opportunities—none that came to fruition—as well as a local medical orchestra through the university. I received emails for the orchestra amid radiation therapy and in no condition to go to regular rehearsals or practice. After I missed the first rehearsal it felt as though the train had left the station. While I still received emails and was assured that I could join at any time, something inside me told me that I shouldn’t or that I couldn’t. Would I even be able to practice adequately to be a quality addition to the orchestra? For goodness’ sake, I could barely read music while playing violin anymore because of my visual deficit, or so I had told myself. I was scared: I didn’t want t...

  Chapter 52: Along the Camino               To call the Camino a hike would be dishonest to hikers. We started in the town of Sarria to walk the last 100km. Perhaps it could be considered a hike if flat ground and frequent bars and food were considered standard hiking conditions. We made it roughly 8km our first half-day all together. The sun was becoming sweltering at midday due to our late start. We had pints of Estella Galicia—a favorite of the Camino with a characteristic woman wearing a blue dress as the tap handles. Water was expensive, so we hydrated on beer. The nebulous path of the Camino is marked by yellow shell symbols painted along the path. We continue to follow these towards the next town.               We arrive relatively late to the first town hostel; it is nearly full. We check in and get three of the few remaining beds in a gymna...

Chapter 51: Beginning the Camino de Santiago Tutorials ended and we began to plan our summers before returning to the US for the fall semester. Most of the girls in the other house decided to go to Amsterdam. Micah and I planned to meet with Kyle, who was in Europe for a choir trip, and walk a portion of the Camino de Santiago—a historical catholic pilgrimage along the northern coast of Spain. It was once a way for people to get declarations from the church to enter heaven, particularly those who were destitute or poor. Others could pay their way through. The plan was for Micah and me to fly to Madrid and then take the train north to Leon, where we would meet up with Kyle and start our journey west toward Santiago. Micah and I got to Madrid without incident and check into our nearby hostel. After putting our stuff away, we head to a nearby Tapas bar for something to eat. Micah speaks fluent Spanish, and I speak essentially none, and my Japanese is of no obvious help. Micah talks to t...

 Chapter 50: English Summer: Tutorials were the only classes we had that were taught by Oxford Professors. I simultaneously looked forward to the class and felt disappointed to have less time to study Japanese. We chose our tutorials individually, and so every class would be one on one.   I chose a music theme and studied Brahms. Brahms was a composer at the beginning of the Romantic period. He was a favorite of mine whom I thought had been generally underappreciated; I wanted to learn more. For my first essay I chose to write about “Variations on a Theme by Haydn” because it represented many of my favorite qualities of Brahms’ music. He had an excellent grasp of music theory and the classical era before and was able to use these to craft music with the intensity, swelling emotion, and complex timbre of the Romantic era. It was initially very difficult to write about these pieces. Scanning the scores and trying to find patterns and uniquely Brahms-like features, as well as o...

English winter: Snow fell in early January around the English countryside and in town. The neighborhood became quiet and calm. Coaxed by the weather we frequented a local café with hearths and seemingly endless mulled wine. On one evening of heavy snow, we encountered another group of Oxford students amidst a snowball fight.   They invited us to join and recruited us to throw snowballs into their friend’s house to get them to come out. We then found ourselves in a large but short-lived snowball fight. It felt a little like being back in an elementary school neighborhood snowball fight.               Later, we all went on a trip to Scotland. We started in Glasgow and eventually ended up in Edinburgh. Edinburgh is built on a volcanic plug with a large castle at the top. We would later learn that it was the inspiration for Hogwarts in Harry Potter. While we tried to hike our first full day, we were turned around by t...

  Chapter 48: End of life forms: When my parents visited early October, we learned about the promising MRI. They brought with them some paperwork for Washington. This was the end-of-life paperwork for physician assisted suicide for if/when I moved up to Seattle due to disease progression. I already had an appointment scheduled with the UW brain tumor center for December to establish with a physician so to make any transition between SLC and Seattle smooth. Dad starts explaining the forms as he pulls them out. I’m eager for the explanation to be done; I’m familiar with the forms from a patient care perspective, but it feels foreboding when relating to my own care.               A couple of days after my parents leave, I take the forms out and begin filling them out. The top of the first form reads “Request for medication to end my life in a humane and dignified manner.” Time after time with patients I would think t...

Chapter 47:Classes at Oxford The first two months we were taught by a professor from PLU—Dr. Strum—who was delightful and knowledgeable and excited about his subject. He taught English philosophy and literature. He would arrive each day on a little foldable bike he brought from home. We began with some basic philosophy to lay a quick foundation of different philosophical methodologies.   Our first book was Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.” For each reading a different student wrote an essay, developing both their own question regarding the reading, and then writing the essay based on said question. The following day we would use that essay as a jumping off point for the discussion. When professor Strum returned our essays, they were littered with comments and insights and little pearls of wisdom. After getting the essay back, we were allowed to rewrite for the final grade and product. Allowing and incentivizing us to rewrite turned out to be an incredible teaching tool. Thi...