Living through brain cancer: A travelogue
Trying to figure out how my brain works post cancer — one experience, symptom, frustration, breakthrough, memory, and story at a time.
This is a first-person record of what it feels like to keep living, thinking, working, parenting, adapting, getting angry, finding humor, and trying to understand a brain and life changed by cancer.
July 31, 2026
I love bicycling. I toured Europe from Amsterdam to Rome and Paris to Valencia, alone, stealth camping with the occasional hostel to shower. Before that, I rode everywhere, cycling to work in the rain, snow, or sunshine.
Read More →July 28, 2026
My wife got an electric bike first. She would ride side-by-side on her electric bike while I pushed myself on a regular road bike. She kept pace, or would pull ahead on the ascents, and I would crush the descents, spee…
Read More →July 8, 2026
There's a neurological test involving scheduling.
Read More →July 6, 2026
I was asked to be the commencement speaker for the graduating class of 2026 at Hastings High School — the high school I graduated from in 1983. These were the students I had to leave in January when I realized that tea…
Read More →June 7, 2026
When people hear what I'm struggling with, and what I've been through, the response is often to pray for me. I always accept. I thank them for their willingness to think of me. They are showing that they care…
Read More →May 21, 2026
I don't expect the doctors to know everything. I understand that the brain is complicated and that every patient responds differently. But I don't understand the endocrinologist who acts like she's been handed a proble…
Read More →July 31, 2026
I love bicycling. I toured Europe from Amsterdam to Rome and Paris to Valencia, alone, stealth camping with the occasional hostel to shower. Before that, I rode everywhere, cycling to work in the rain, snow, or sunshine.
July 28, 2026
My wife got an electric bike first. She would ride side-by-side on her electric bike while I pushed myself on a regular road bike. She kept pace, or would pull ahead on the ascents, and I would crush the descents, spee…
July 8, 2026
There's a neurological test involving scheduling.
July 6, 2026
I was asked to be the commencement speaker for the graduating class of 2026 at Hastings High School — the high school I graduated from in 1983. These were the students I had to leave in January when I realized that tea…
June 26, 2026
For radiation, you sign in at the desk and are escorted to a dressing room. You are often alone in the room. You change out of your clothes and put on a gown, storing everything in a locker. You walk to a waiting room d…
June 13, 2026
I've been resistant to calorie counting, tracking proteins, and 'macros' for a long time. Even so my wife did it for months and lost weight, got stronger, and identified a couple of foods she should avoid.
Diagnosis, treatment, radiation, and the medical reality of brain cancer.
recoveryThe long, non-linear work of recovering — physically, cognitively, emotionally.
symptomSpecific neurological symptoms: seizures, fatigue, cognitive changes, and more.
supportWhat it means to receive help, prayer, care, and presence from others.
daily lifeThe ordinary made strange — getting dressed, sleeping, moving through the day.
workIdentity, teaching, and what happens to a career when the brain changes.
identityWho you are when the person you were is no longer available.
faithPrayer, meaning, and the complicated territory of belief under pressure.
Dream the Ride began as a way to write through what was happening — to make sense of a brain that had been operated on, treated, and returned to daily life changed in ways that were hard to explain and harder to ignore. It is not a medical journal. It is not a survivor's guide. It is a travelogue of a particular kind of journey.
Read the StoryDream the Ride stays centered on first-person experience and the author's writing — not a polished health brand, not a clinic, not a nonprofit. Just one person trying to understand what happened to his brain, and writing about it honestly.
