One Year With Glioma

Today I complete one year since I woke up inside an Airport Ambulance on my way to the hospital. This one year has been the scarriest, most intense and fullfilling year of my whole life.
I have learned more about myself and life in general in one year than I have learned throughout my entire journey on this planet. After thinking about what to write to "celebrate" my first birthday with brain tumor I decided to share the lessons I learned in this intense year. These are not set in order of importance but they are all important to me.
1. The Importance of Faith - I used to believe in God`s existence, but now I am sure He exists. Being closer to death made me as close to life as I have ever been. Life is a miracle and the sequence of events that led me to write this can only be explained by God's desire for me to be here;
2. The Importance of Family - Nothing has been more important through this journey than having the comforting presence of my wife, daughters, parents, in-laws and relatives throughout this journey. If I needed a strong reason to fight for my life they have given it to me, and the relentless optimism with how I face my condition is only possible because I get re-energized every time I see the smiley faces of my daughters when I get home.
3. The Importance of Friends - I have always kept a strong connection to my friends. The love and support they have given me has just been overwhelming (pause to cry). The way in which Livia and my College friends sent me to France for surgery (Força Patrick) has simply been the most incredible demonstration of affection I have ever received and I will be eternally grateful for the energy boost I got from it, not to mention all the incredible messages and support from all the friends I made in the US and the new friends I made at work in Brazil, who have been uncodittionally supportive.
4. The Importance of Fellow Brain Tumor Warriors - When I was at my lowest point right after being diagnosed I was picked-up from the ground by complete strangers. Liz (Liz Army), Jim Hewitt (RIP brother, I have not met you but you have helped save me), Scott Vickroy and others I have met through the Internet helped me understand that I might still have a lot of life ahead of me. While none of us are exactly sure about how much, we all ought to live life at its fullest until our time comes.
5. The Power of the Digital World - the Internet has helped me connect to very importamt people, has given me access to scientific papers that have helped me make critical decisions with the help of my doctors and has enabled me to help others, the original intent of this blog. I believe we are entering an era where people with common interests will finally be able to leave their differences behind and connect to work for the common good. We ought to leverage the knowledge sharing power of the Internet and digital information to accelerate the scientific gains in the fight for a disease free, long and great life for Humanity.
6. The Importance of Public Health Care - I had never been a supporter of big Government or Public Health Care, but there are things we need to socialize in order to create a strong society. As the IRS says in front of its building, "Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society". I was saved by the Brazilian Public Health Care System, where I was diagnosed and which now provides me with "free" (I do happily pay taxes) chemo drugs, and by the French Public Health Care System, where I was operated at a significantly lower cost that it would have cost me to be operated in Brazil, even with Insurance. After reading stories about the personal financial havoc that Cancer can cause to people in the US I had to rethink my views on Public Health Care. Public Health Care is bad until we find ourselves caught in the sad side of the debate. Strong democracies socialize gains that benefit society in general, such as Education and Health Care, and privatize losses to those that have caused them. We ought to rething the direction in which the world is going, where Banks and Companies are rewarded with "Too Big to Fail" policies, socializing losses and privatizing gains to risk takers and bad managers, while Health Care and Education, the foundation for any strong society, become secondary.
7. The Liberating Power of Knowledge - Brain Tumor has kept me away from my old passion, triathlon, and I had to find a new outlet for my energy. I have been reading more that I have ever read in my whole life. My father has always been a role model, a self-made man that reads an average of 3 books a week and who instilled in me the passion for knowledge. I have never studied so much since I was a student, and I love every new discovery I make, from the History of Cancer, the History of Medieval Europe, Capitalism and the power of Democracy combined with the Rule of Law. I am now reading a book by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the Brazilian President that transformed this country into what it is today. His "Brain Tumor" was exile. A fervorous Brazilian, FHC was extradicted during the Military Government and risked his life to come back at age 37 (my age at diagnosys) to help fight for a new Brazilian democracy. His defining characterisitic is his focus on the present with a relentless optimism and vision of how we can make the future better, because the future will always be different from the past.
8. Dealing with Suffering - I had always been a "chicken" when it came to dealing with bad news, such as death and disease. I have learned to live with both in a way that continues to surprise me. One of the first things I did to "test" my brain after surgery was to speak to unemployed executives going through Out-Placement at my father's office. The topic was "Every Executive has his Journey in the Desert". The types of journeys included things such as being laid-off, going through divorce, going out of business and losing a loved one. I was there to talk about dealing with a challenging health condition, and this was set to help me understand how I would react to public speaking as I knew I had a big one coming at my real job. It was the best feeling ever, I was fine to speak in public and most importantly was finally able to empathize with people that were also in very challenging situations. Having Brain Tumor invites people to talk about their problems, and the advice I always give is the same Winston Churchill gave England during the Second World War: "never give up, never, never, never!" Everything will be fine in the end, if things are not fine you have not reached the end.
9. The Importance of Priorities - Life is too short and unfortunately we cannot do everything we want. In order to enjoy all aspects of life, from family, friends, work and personal hobbies, we need to set limits, or one will take over the others. We will never have enough time to do everything we want, so being choiceful about where to invest our time is critical to a fullfilling life.
10. The Importance of Curioity - Never take answers for granted, often times things are done in certain ways due to a sequence of events rather than because it is the best way to be done. A mind that is focused on making things better will always find opportunities for improvement, even if you are an Engineer in search for answers on brain tumor. If you can't find an answer remember that Human Progress has only been possible because some people decided to never quit until they found answers to their questions.
Thank you all for the support and love given to me, I hope these thoughts help me give a little bit back to you of all you've given to me in the past year.

It's a good day to be alive!

Today was a very good day. Woke up early to go to my first post-glioma race, after a long night where I finished my first analytical research on brain tumor. For those than know me well there is nothing like sports or analytics to get me going.
I am creating a new blog based on my "scientific" discoveries, I want to generate insights for students or doctors that are getting into brain tumor research, I hope I can help open new avenues for research on brain tumor. This new blog will be called "We can think with glioma".
I ran a 10k with a good old friend of mine who was also a great runner but got off the wagon after getting married a few months ago. It was an incredible day, perfect weather, about 8,000 people running and a great route close to downtown São Paulo (Pacaembu). This was the first "run-only" race I've done and the energy was incredible, I think I am ready to set more ambitious plans, and I will create a sports blog to talk about my goals and achievements called "We Can Run With Glioma".
On Friday I had dinner with a good old friend. I was set to have beer with him nearly one year ago but disappeared and never got back to him with a meeting spot. I was hospitalized right after having a seizure and when he finally got hold of me I shared that I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. While stunned by the initial shock, he and his mom, who I am yet to meet, always cheared me up with very cool messages.
My friend shared with me a video that captures my feelings in a way I would have never been able to describe, check this out: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/stacey_kramer_the_best_gift_i_ever_survived.html
This is the same friend that shared with me 12 years ago a phrase I repeat until today when someone tells me they don't have time - "What separates us from death?".
He shared a moving story about a relative diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer, one of those with poor recovery prospects. I am sure I am butchering the details but I hope I got the essence. They consulted a psychologist to understand what might happen in that person's mind with that prognostic, and he shared that it depends on the person's attittude towards those last days.
Some people have the best time of their lives in that period, telling people they've dettached themselves from how much they missed and love them. They would also check-off their bucket lists or simply reject anything that was not fully endorsed by their hearts.
On the other hand some decided to die right there, living a life of misery and pessimism, forgetting that they still had precious days. months or even years to do the best they could with their time left.
What a profound impact attittude can have on anyone's life, wether with or without cancer. In Steve Job's biography he shared that he always had a feeling that he would die early, so he decided to use every precious second he had to change the world. What a success!
I really think we should all live like this before we are reminded of how much time we've divested making poor choices or simply not following our hearts due to lame excuses. We all have a mission or more in life, your heart will tell you where to go, be open because an unwanted experience -- frightening, traumatic, costly -- can turn out to be a priceless gift, just like Stacey Kramer shared. Thank you Stacey for sharing your experience, you have made the world a better place by choosing optimism instead of pessimism.
One of my favorite Esopus paraboles is the one about the fox and the grapes. The fox really wanted to catch some grapes that were too high for it to reach. Instead of figuring out a way to get to those grapes the fox told itself it didn't want grapes anymore.
Always remember that pain is temporary, quitting is forever, like my Mount Lebanon Caffeine and Cycling Club friends had taught me. Those nuts just finished the most painful bike race I've heard off (seemed worse than The Dirty Dozen!), the Diabolical Double. Hats-off to you my friends, I hope to join you again, maybe in the same shape you have seen me last. Yesterday I biked for about an hour searching for hills that replicated the same painful experience of climbing Mount Washington. I dearly remember when I climbed Mount Washington for the first time, then followed Liberty Ave. all the way to the Zoo, going into the long observatory climb to finally bonk at Greentree! Luckily those guys had a cereal bar to share with that inexperienced Brazilian that showed up to bike with them for the first time.
What a great time, I will never quit!

Saving for Retirement with Glioma

Liz, the young 32 years-old inspiring leader of The Liz Army (check Survival Stories to learn more about her), asked a question that is so relevant not only to us living with a gun pointed to our heads but to everyone that saves money for retirement: should we or should we not save money for retirement?
In fact by total coincidence when Liz asked the question I was having the same discussion with my wife.
In my opinion every responsible person that has enough to do so should save money for a rainy day, which can come in the form of a health issue, a job loss or other bad things. On the other hand savings can open new opportunities, such as making the trips of your dreams, building the house of your dreams etc.
However saving for retirement to me today is an obsolete concept. In a day and age when people that are 75 years-old finish Ironman races, run Marathons, run large corporations etc. I wonder what is retirement good for when you can be productive your entire life.
Obviously age brings its effects, such as gray hair, wrinkles, lost mobility, eyesight, strength etc. However saving for a day when you can finally do nothing does not make a lot of sense to me. Why defer your dream for 30 years when you can chase your dreams today?
I had an uncle that worked like a dog his whole life and had very tough ups and downs, from being arrested and tortured during the Brazilian military Government because he was a "communist" when he was just a student leader chasing new ideas. Once he begun working he eppitomized capitalism. Working for an energy company he made his way from rags to riches, but when he finally decided to do more of what he liked (i.e. travelling) by retiring, it was too late. He was diagosed right after retirement with lung cancer and is now watching us from Heaven. He accomplished a lot professionaly and personaly, raising my cousins who are both great guys, made a trip to China to see communism in action and made a lot of people around him better people with his great heart. Nonetheless he enjoyed only a small portion of the fruits of his labor.
On the other hand you have people like my dad, who doesn't save for retirement and says that he is going to work until the last day of his life. My dad loves what he does and it always feels like a day away from work to him is a day wasted.
There are two phrases that summarize what I think about this topic:
- Find a job you love and you won't have to work for the rest of your life
- Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans (this one comes from John Lennon, I just learned this one from Kotler's book Winning at Innovation)
In the field of economics there is a concept called "utility", which in essence is an equivalent to money except that it doesn't have a value. What to me is worth 100 bucks might be worth as little as 5 or as much as 1,000 bucks to someone else. Instead of calling this money "bucks" a teacher I had called it "utils".
If knowing that having a safety cushion brings you more utility that investing in your dream trip today save enough to bring you peace of mind before you make your trip. If you realized that saving for when you turn 80 doesn't make a lot of sense either go ahead and make your trip!
I hope this helps everyone that wonders if they should save for retirement. From a strictly financial stand-point saving for retirement makes the most sense as the Government provides tax incentives for those that save money in retirement accounts, but if you are saving but deferring your dream strictly for tax gain purposes I would reconsider the decision. Money is a means, not an end, but a lot of times it can be an end and might lead us down a wrong path.
I just finished watching Margin Call, a good depiction of the mortgage backed securities market melt down. In a way the movie helps illustrate how a bank, supposed to transfer money from those that have too much and don't have anything productive to do with it, to those that need it and want to produce something with it, of course at a cost, all of a sudden turned into a big gambler through leverage. This has lead solid century-old institutions to disappear in a blink of an eye because instead of being a good resource allocator the bank became a blind money chaser, investing in securities they barely understood.
Think about what moves you, and if saving is a requirement to do what moves you, save it now. But don't differ your dreams as life expires and we have to live it while it lasts.
But remember that you might have decades after tomorrow, so be careful with living as if there is no tomorrow because I really hope we all have thousands of tomorrows!

Human Experiment - Exercising During Chemo

One of the most important things I learned is how little we know about brain tumors. The more I read about it the more conflicting information about what can and can't be done during treatment I find. One of the most frustrating ones relates to exercising during glioma treatment.
While most neuro-surgeons say no to exercise as it might induce seizures, onchologists encourage exercising for various reasons. I therefore decided to become an experiment to validate or not which route to take. With a sample size of one this might not be statistically significant but hey, someone has to start. If someone wants to join this experiment please sign-up to my self-serving clinical trial.
This week I am on chemo treatment and decided to exercise, completing my first 10K run on Tuesday in under 50 minutes, my old training pace. I signed up for a 10K race in 3 weeks and kept thinking of how emotional I might become when I cross the finish line, but in a much less glamorous fashion I ran 10K on the treadmill and was just as happy to finish.
If biking was my great feat a few weeks ago, I added running to the list. To make it even more exciting my wife was just as excited with my accomplishment, which made me twice as happy.
In 3 weeks I have an MRI, I hope combining exercise and chemo might work. It seemed to work for Lance Armstrong, why not follow his lead? Once again he set the standard and won Ironman 70.3 Florida.
What an example to be followed! Mental toughness, sense of purpose, goal setting, planning ability and lack of fear, this seems to be a decent recipe for success if I could summarize what I see in Lance.
Regardless of what we accomplish we should strive to chase our dreams, and mine is still to finish an Ironman when I turn 40, no matter what I face along the way. To accomplish big things we need to have big dreams, and this is my big one. I hope this makes you dream big too and chase your dreams, wether just a 10K run to trully changing the world through your unique talent. God has given every one of us a gift, find what is your gift and use it. If you don't know what is your gift keep experimenting, I am sure you will find it!

Overcoming Fear - The Secret of Life

One of the biggest challenges for humans is that with our ability to think we developed a deep need to plan for the future, or at the very least minimize risks associated with the future. When I say risk I mean uncertainty as the word risk can take us into totally different universes, from trivial dangerous situations to really bad things. So when faced with potentially dangerous situations we create mechanisms to minimize risks. This has lead us to create mechanisms to try to minimize the uncertainty from all sorts of unexpected events, creating large industries and products such as the financial industry with products like insurance, retirement planning and financial derivatives, the pharmaceutical industry and anti-anxiety drugs, the military industry and weapons, the consulting industry that tries to help us understand what the future will be like and so forth, all of which to give us a false idea that the future is totally in our hands. However the future, as I learned the hard way, is much further out of our control than expected.  .

I am not trying to advocate that planning is not important but quite the contrary, I believe that to live a fully productive, healthy life we need to overcome fear and manage the risks associated with everything we do.

Let me recap what I have done in the last 10 years, all of which with an unknown brain tumor inside my head:

- Quit a great job and sold a fully paid car and apartment to get an MBA in another country (moved from Brazil to the US)

- Left the comfort of being close to family and long-lasting friendships to start from scratch in a new country

- Graduated from the best MBA program in the world (sorry Harvard, Stanford, MIT etc. Carnegie Mellon is the best), where I met amazing people and made long-lasting friendships

- Got married to my wonderful wife and had two amazing daughters

- Decided to stay in the US after graduating and started a new career in Marketing, meeting and working with amazing people and making great friends

- Purchased a house, obviously borrowing lots of money

- Made great new friends and got closer than I had ever been to my American side of the family 

- Completed 2 seasons playing in an adult soccer league 

- As my knees got destroyed by soccer I decided to ride bikes, encouraged by my "older brother" and my uncle

- Joined the Mount Lebanon Caffeine & Cycling Club, where I made great friends 

- To balance all this leg work I started swimming

- I then decided to do triathlons,swimming in 55 degrees water at my first short-triathlon and moving up to complete 3 Half-Ironman events

- Quit a great job and sold two fully paid cars and a partially paid home in the US to go back to Brazil and start-over, now more safely working with the same company I worked at in the US

- Worked and partied hard on every step of the way

Looking back I wonder what my life would be like if I had known that a brain tumor was growing in my head. This is not a self-celebratory blog, it is just to highlighted that my risk profile would have probably been much different. My challenge now is to not let fear overcome my life, and yesterday I reached a milestone: I left the safety of my bike trainer and faced the mad traffic of the city to ride my bike on the road, by myself!

I never thought that such a trivial, taken for granted activity would feel so liberating. I felt like I have finally overcome my fear of having seizures, which I hadn't experienced since my first one last year. Riding where I was I should have been much more worried about traffic, bike thieves or getting lost, but those were simply not in my risk checklist, just like my brain tumor wasn't in my risk checklist when I left Brazil in 2001.

At every stage in life we face decision time, and we should never let our fear of what might happen, which can quite frankly be an infinite list, overcome the joy and feeling of accomplishment that makes us all feel life is worth living and fighting for.

I hope you read this and stop worrying about what can go wrong, life can only be truly fulfilling when we find out how we can be happy if things go right, even if your idea of life going right is a mere bike ride.

Evolution - Biology, Individual, Society and Me

I am about to finish reading "The Emperor of All Maladies", from Sidharta Mukherjee. What a spectacular book, probably the best I have ever read. I am now migrating to a non-cancer related book from Allan Meltzer, in my opinion the best economist/financial historian in the world, a teacher at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, ardent student and "biographer" of the US Federal Reserve, and most reasonable and knowledgeable defender of capitalism, democracy and the rule of law. His book is called "Why Capitalism?".
It is interesting to see how in the last 6 months I have read books that are seemingly so unrelated on the surface, such as "Neuroscience for Dummies" and "Why Capitalism?", but I see stricking connections on how we evolve as species, individuals and society.
I have found a new interest in biology and realized that I have to learn everything I learned in high school again. Science has evolved enough in the last 20 years that I see a need to go back to basics and study high-school biology to understand several things I learned about cancer. Oncogenesis, Tumor Suppressor Genes, Heat Shock Proteins and so forth, things that I feel a deep need to connect in order to understant what is happening to me and how the drugs I am taking help fight it. I have even formulated a few hipothesis that I feel a need to validate, but before I pose my questions I want to make sure I am not asking trivial questions.
One thing that became clear to me is that cancer can be as deadly as it can be resurrecting. As I studied Neuroscience I learned new theories on how we evolved as species from unicellular organisms to what we are today.
As unicellular organisms grouped themselves to perform tasks, the cells in the inner part of the group of cells faced very different environments from the cells exposed to the outside world. That created a need for cells to specialize. Of course cells, just like people, don't choose what they want to become biologically. Saying that a cell can choose what function to perform is as crazy as me saying that I decided to grow wings.
But the environment takes care of changing cells. Radiation, just to mention one known environmental factor that can change our DNA, and as a consequence the function of our cells, will create new cell functions, creatures and sometimes diseases. Evolution then takes care of the rest.
Imagine that at first all cells in multicellular organisms performed all vital functions. Then radiation hit the group and the cells outside the group could not produce energy anymore, but only filter radiation as cells inside the group focused on building energy reserves and "feeding" the outside cells. These cell groups, with the genetic stability provided by the radiation filtering cells, all of a sudden became more stable, creating a multicellular organism much better prepared to face the enviroment and survive. For another random reason DNA changed again and the inner cells were transformed in two groups, one specialized in digestion and another one specialized in energy storage for tough times. When food became scarce the energy storage cells provided the food for the other cells, enabling this organism to survive while others died in times of scarcity.
Of course this is an overly simplistic view of evolution, but if we think of ourselves as a self-regulated group of unicellular organisms we can look at cancer as a Coup D'Etat of certain cells.
In my case for some reason the cells that are supposed to protect my brain now think they need to take over it, messing up the balance of forces that turns a chaotic unicellular environment into a well organized single entity that is now writting this crazy story.
As I read Meltzer's book I realized how capitalism, in the form of market forces, democracy and the rule of law, performs in essence a self-regulating function for our society. We want a society where individual rights are preserved and never above the collective good. Democracy gives all players the right to choose what is best for society. When a group of individuals tries to take over control at the expense of others, the voters can expel that "cancer" and self-regulate the country, or the "body". This self-regulating mechanism of capitalist democracies has proven over time to be the most effective way to produce prosperity and improve the standards of living, no matter in which society it is implemented, from multi-cultural US or Brazilian societies, to the uniform and conservative Japanese or German societies.
Brazil is now living a wonderful moment. People of all classes are realizing that they can create opportunities for themselves. I met a person at a Trade Show last week, an entrepreneur that was turning garbage into reusable bags. I learned that his office was close to where I lived before I moved to the US. When I told him that I sold my house, car and gathered all my money to get an MBA in the US he said he got goose-bumps. To me that was such a no-brainer (no pun intended), but to a lot of people choosing instability over stability might be a tough choice. I, on the other hand, was blown away by this rags to riches young adult who saw in trash an opportunity to help the environment and make money.
Resurrecting after my brain tumor was just another example of how one can face adversity (or instability), adapt, evolve and move on, always on a path to become better than before. If we all try to become better as we face instabilty we will always strive as humans. Of course if I had the choice I would not have chosen to take the brain tumor road, but now that I am on it I want to come back home better than I was before, and so far I feel much better.

Incredible Week with Family, Friends and Sports!

“The same way Escola Politécnica (my College) develops the professional, sports develop in people the key aspects of their character. It is where one learns to win and lose; it is where one practices solidarity all the time, it is where one nurtures respect for the opponent. AAAP (Athletics Association of Escola Politécnica) does that: it helps to improve the human being. That is why it is indispensable and helpful.”

Senator Mario Covas, January 19, 1993.

With this letter São Paulo’s deceased Senator, State Governor and democratic leader Mario Covas opened our Athletics Association honors book. Before my surgery my College friends, specifically from AAAP, with Livia’s magical touch and help, gave me an incredible gift, a Photo Album with many wishing well notes, pictures of our College days and demonstrations of love. For this and so many other reasons I love my friends and sports and feel so compelled and positive to keep battling my tumor. I was sent to France for surgery in the most upbeat state possible. Mario Covas, who also played basketball at my College, was a prominent political leader that helped shape Brazil’s current democracy. He also shared my passion for sports and hard-work.

This past week was probably the best week since I was diagnosed. If anything it was the closest to normal week since I was diagnosed, despite the fact that I was in my fifth chemo cycle, which continues to be light on my body and I hope aggressive on my tumor. As a matter of fact my tumor continues to remain quiet, not showing any signs of growth.

I worked really hard this week as we had a very important trade show, but my great week started with a conversation on Saturday that really energized me to exercise. I met a talented cancer biologist and shared my story with him and was curious to hear his opinion on exercising and cancer. He had an irrefutable argument to demonstrate that cancer and exercising go in opposite directions. In fact if exercising was a potential cause of cancer high performance athletes would have a higher incidence of cancer, but in fact it is just the opposite. Maybe that is why we have Race for the Cure, Livestrong and so many other fundraising organizations that use sports to help in the fight against cancer.

On Monday I called my “older brother”, it had been a while since we last spoke and I knew he would be excited with my progress. I also wanted to share the great news that I am back exercising, as he was one of the people that inspired me to get into biking, leading me into triathlon. He was very excited to hear the news;  he is one of those people that just feed you with energy, cheering me up to work-out as I was. As soon as I hung up I started feeling a light pain in my lower back, which I immediately associated to my spinal bone marrow.

One of the first things my oncologist shared after my first chemo cycle was that I must have a great bone marrow as my blood was nearly unchanged after my first chemo cycle. When I felt the pain I thought to myself, talking to my bone marrow: “if this is how it is going to be I am going to teach you a lesson”. I hopped on my bike and rode hard for 30 minutes. The pain was gone.

Interestingly I felt like the chemo was making me handle exercising better. In fact the next day I went for a run and was on the treadmill for 30 minutes, which enabled me to run 6 km. In essence I ran at my pre-tumor training pace and didn’t feel a thing. I hadn’t run 6 km straight at that pace since I was diagnosed, and to do that felt great!

An interesting fact happened this week too: all of a sudden I started remembering several names from the past. From kindergarden friends I see in school pictures whose names I had long forgotten to my whole basketball team at the club I played for when I was 13 years old.

The brain is just incredible! I used to be a decent student at school and right after I came back from surgery a school friend of mine jokingly said, after I shared I removed a large chunk of brain, that we were finally playing on a leveled field. I never laughed so hard but little did he know that I uncluttered the brain as if I've done a total system recovery!

On Wednesday I went to the gym again after a long day of work and ran for 15 minutes to warm-up and lifted weights. To do that a day after a 6km run, to which I was not used to anymore, made me feel like I am ready to get back to business.

On Thursday I went to my oncologist for a consultation and he encouraged me to keep exercising, I felt so great!

After that I went to a party to celebrate my College’s Athletics Association Birthday. We probably had at least 20 generations of College grads there, every one of which at some point involved in building and maintaining AAAP. To watch how things have evolved made me feel really hopeful about Brazil’s future. The students are much better at fundraising, preserving the history of the organization and most importantly continue to demonstrate the importance of sports to build the character of those that love it.

To my surprise a current student knew about my story and was curious to know how I was doing. He sold to a friend of mine a sweatshirt from my College that I took with me to France for my surgery. My friends gave me it at my farewell party and the student found out about me when my friend picked it up. He was happy to see me well and every smile I get just feeds me up with energy. I got home at nearly Midnight, something I hadn’t done in a long time!

One would think I would be tired on Friday after such a week, but I was feeling great! I worked hard all day and was meeting my cousins for dinner as one of them was at São Paulo from out-of-town. Before they met me at 9:30PM I decided to ride my bike on the trainer and hit another milestone: for the first time since I was diagnosed I rode for one straight hour on the trainer, which is even more painful than riding on the road as there are no downhill roads to rest or landscape to relax the mind.

On Saturday I woke up early and repeated my running/lifting routine, getting me ready to go out and walk around my neighborhood to get Mother’s Day gifts for my mom and Livia. It was a long week and we still had more ahead: we went to a friend’s twin-girls birthday party, dropped the girls at my mom’s house and closed the day with dinner with friends and once again a great time!

At the birthday party I was speaking to a friend who has an 18 years-old son that is also battling cancer. I am confident that he, just like me, will beat this beast. Interestingly when I shared the pain I felt in my lower back she shared that her son felt the same pain during chemo, so my remote hypothesis might be right, I might have put my bone marrow to work as planned.

To close this perfect week Sunday was Mother`s Day and Livia made the best lunch she has ever prepared to celebrate Mother`s Day. Hers and my parents came over with my brother and her brother and sister and we had a great time. We have officially inaugurated our kitchen with an amazing homemade meal.

I was tinkering with the idea of going downstairs to exercise but I wanted to share this amazing week with you with a conclusion: as long as we have a loving family, great friends and a passion to live for we will always be happy. Life is perfect as long as we live it well, despite all the hardship and battles we face.

I have been reading another amazing book that a Pittsburgh friend sent me: "The Sunny Side of Cancer", from Sunny Carney. The power of staying strong as we face our battles will always determine how well we live, whether we have 60 months or 60 years to live ahead. I thought I was having some original thoughts about life but Sunny faces Carcinoid Cancer, a rare and tough cancer, with the same strength and positivity I am facing my tumor, focusing on living life to the fullest and battling her cancer with an uplifting attitude, inspiring me even more to do the same.

Like a friend I still owe a visit to used to tell me when I said I didn`t have time for something he would reply “How can you not have time? What separates us from death?”.  Since then I rarely say I don’t have time for something, I always say I am doing something better instead.

Enjoy your time, I hope you liked this update; life is great and will continue to be no matter what! Focus on the positives and fix the negatives, this is what life is about.