Dear Family and Friends

Dear family and friends,

As many of you know, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor last year. I’ve tried hard to ignore the chemotherapy and the doctors’ appointments and the endless pills that I take, but recently it’s been too much. I can’t do all of the things in school that I expect of myself while keeping myself healthy. Ultimately, I’m just tired, I can’t keep up, and as a result I’ve decided to quit medical school.

Don’t worry. Nothing with regards to my health has changed for the worse. I just had an MRI and the tumor is getting incrementally smaller, as we hope it would be. But when the wheels are spinning and I’m not going anywhere, sometimes I just need to get out of the car and trudge through the mud myself. So that’s what I’m doing.

I don’t know what my plan is, but already I feel better. There’s far more out there in the world that I can explore. Hopefully, then, I can enrich peoples’ lives and better the world around me. Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.” I believe that.

Thus, I go forward into an unknown future and a startling abyss with the greatest of hope and the hand of God. The better angels in me wouldn’t have it any other way.

All my love,

Michael

PS. You can get my medical updates (and so much other junk floating around in my head), as well as keeping in touch, with the addresses below. Also, my sister, Katie, is running a half-marathon for cancer research. If you’d like to support her in that, I’ve attached her link too.

http://mike-c-gbm.blogspot.com
michael.brewster.davis@gmail.com
http://www.active.com/donate/tntwaak/katiestarrunner