Change of plans

I don't even know if anyone is still trying to read this blog, but if you've been wondering whether I've been swallowed whole by a peat bank, here's the story behind my recent 'silence':

After leaving my island at the end of the world in December for a little break from 'the field' in Germany and for a highly secret (I guess not anymore) visit to my honey back in the US, I decided to return to Germany because my mother's melanoma was found to have spread to her brain, advancing her to stage IV and making the condition terminal in the sense that statistically, less than 10% of patients at this stage are alive after one year.

This was quite a shock, obviously, but after the initial insanity, things are quietening down a bit as we're adjusting to living at this stage. At this point, there have been two rounds of chemo and radiation of one of the two brain mets, and everything is still up in the air -it takes about 8-10 weeks to see if any of these things are doing anything.

I was debating for a long time whether I should continue posting to this blog, since it probably won't be (hopefully) amusing "aren't they crazy" stories from the land o' peat and prebyterians. But since I'm essentially a stranger in this land of my childhood, I realized there can still be "aren't they crazy stories", and it may be cathargic to recount my experiences in the land of stage IV cancer here.

I dunno, we'll see how it goes...