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Brain Tumor Awareness Month: Recap of #BTAM 2023

May 20th, 2023
Going Gray in May

May is Brain Tumor Awareness month, and it’s been a busy one for us! With so much going on, I wanted to recap a few major events to share what advocacy looks like for our family.

I’ll share more about…
- The Tumor Takedown Tailgate
- National Institutes of Health: Neuro Oncology Branch
- Race for Hope: Washington D.C.
- National Brain Tumor Society: Head to the Hill
- Quality of Life Research Roundtable
- Roon: The most helpful place online for people navigating complex health conditions
I also pause to recognize that May 26, 2023 is my official “Crani-versary,” or the anniversary of my brain surgery (awake craniotomy) and resection of my primary brain tumor. I don’t want to share too much about this milestone in this post because I haven’t quite sorted through the complicated emotions, and I don’t want to take away from the community tone of this post to center myself and a personal milestone. My diagnosis anniversary is next month, June 10 (several days between surgery and official pathology/diagnosis), and you can expect that between May 26 and June 10, I’ll publish a post reflecting on seven years living with brain cancer, but for today, for this post, let’s keep it topical for Brain Tumor Awareness Month.

The Tumor Takedown Tailgate: TTT4

Our annual local fundraiser to benefit National Brain Tumor Society was a huge success, despite rain and even sleet–because Indiana in April, but the sun broke, and the huge tent and hard-working volunteers at Folktale Greenwood had no problem with accommodating the bad weather. We raised more than $20,000 to benefit National Brain Tumor Society, bringing our four-year total donations to $85,000!!

When we started the #TumorTakedownTailgate we had no idea that we’d create an anticipated annual event that connects our community and puts up these huge dollars for brain cancer research. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I can’t wait to bring us all together next year for TTT5 when I know we’ll push over $100,000 raised in five years to benefit NBTS.

Thanks again to Folktale (book your next wedding or event here), Dashboard Food Truck and Catering (eat your next meal here), Jack’s Donuts (snag your next breakfast here), Mashcraft Brewing (buy your next beer here, and invite me to join you), and Ramona (find this delicious organic wine spritz on your next beer run (B double E double R U N, beer run).

To Lauren Casey from RTV Indianapolis, thank you for your incredible emcee duties, Jay Elliot (book him for your next party or event), and Ben Tatum (catch him around town and ask him for a Green Day cover in my honor), you all brought energy, talent, and set the tone for the day.

Special thanks to my wife, Whitney, and our best friend, Lindsay, along with Chef Mark Henrichs, and literal superwoman Katie Henrichs for your partnership in pulling this event together each year!

Follow the TTT Facebook and Instagram to be first to learn about our next event.

NIH: Neuro Oncology Branch Visit

I was humbled to be invited with my dear friend, Kim Wallgren, Executive Director of the Collaborative Ependymoma Research Network (CERN) for us each to deliver guest lectures at the National Institutes of Health Neuro Oncology Branch. Drs. Mark Gilbert and Terri Armstrong are dear friends of the brain tumor community and world-leading clinician-researchers at the NIH. This was a truly humbling experience to get a tour of an NIH lab and meet with researchers, then deliver our perspectives on survivorship and patient advocacy.

We even grabbed a sandwich at Call Your Mother. My middle name is Jewish Deli, if you didn’t know.

Race for Hope DC

The Race for Hope DC is one of the largest brain tumor fundraising events all year! This 5k around the Capitol raised over $1.3M for brain tumor research this year alone!! It was awesome to be on hand for this powerful event, and it’s one of the few times all year when all of our social media brain tumor pals are together in one place! Here I am with two of my closest friends, Liz Salmi (middle; my fellow punk rocker) and Lisa O’Leary (right; my co-facilitator for our monthly support group, Brain Tumor Support Conversations).

Head to the Hill

Head to the Hill is the signature event for National Brain Tumor Society and our brain tumor community. We mobilize nearly 400 advocates from across the country to bring our legislative priorities to Congress through meetings with members of Congress from advocates’ districts and states. This year we asked Congress to…
- Fund the National Institutes of Health at $51B
- Fund the Department of Defense Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program at $150M and maintain pediatric brain tumors and adult brain cancers are eligible research areas
- Co-Sponsor the Stop the Wait Act that will eliminate deadly waiting periods for Social Security Disability benefits and Medicare coverage for people facing serious and terminal diagnoses
What was most special for our family this year was having our oldest, Isaac (11yo), join us. Isaac joined Whitney and me to meet with our elected officials to tell our stories and make our asks to Congress. Isaac was amazing! By the end of the day he even led one of our advocacy meetings in the lead speaking role! One of the staffer’s asked Isaac on the way out if he was going to be a lobbyist. Without missing a beat Isaac replied, “Nope, a lawyer.”

It was such a proud moment to share my life of advocacy with our oldest son. I travel a lot for speaking and advocacy events, and it was so meaningful to share some of this with Isaac. He’s incredible.

Quality of Life Research Roundtable

A few years ago my pal Liz, you already met her above, invited me to join as a co-investigator in a project that she won grant funding to convene through the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). We called ourselves the Brain Cancer Quality of Life Collaborative, or BCQoLC, and our goal was to create a research network to define and innovate on interventions to enhance the quality of life for people living with brain tumors.

After years of research and a few published papers, the group took a further step this May by convening a multi-disciplinary research meeting hosted by NBTS. I can’t say too much about this event yet, but each person in the picture below is a patient or caregiver in the community with deep relationships, engagement, and influence in the field. I am humbled to call them friends. This picture is my Twitter timeline come to life!

Left to right: Adam, Lisa, Liz, Sabine, Emily, Jeremy, and Guy

Roon: Launch of the iOS App

Speaking of brain cancer quality of life, I met Rohan Ramakrishna, MD and Vikram Bhaskaran in 2021 when they approached me about a new platform they were building to transform the way medical information is delivered to patients and caregivers.

It’s our goal to be the best place online for people navigating hard health conditions, starting with the aggressive brain cancer, glioblastoma. The app has recently launched on iOS and the web at www.roon.com. On the app, you’ll find educational videos delivered by experts as well as answers to many questions that come up during the journey of glioblastoma. These short form videos from researchers, physicians, nurses, mental health professionals, patients, and caregivers deliver medically vetted information in a human way. We launched with glioblastoma, and dementia, Long Covid, and ALS are the conditions already underway to be released on the app soon.

Scan the QR code to check out the app–you can access many of the resources without even creating an account!

roon-flyer42 Download

Conclusion to #BTAM

As Brain Tumor Awareness Month draws to a close I have a super secret special announcement to share that you’ll just have to wait to hear more about! It’s coming up next week, so stay tuned to my social feeds and right here on the blog to get the update!

Follow my Link Tree to see all my social channels! Until next time, peace, love, brain. Adam out.
TTT4 Raises $20k to Benefit National Brain Tumor Society!

May 1st, 2023

We express our most deep and sincere gratitude for all attendees of the 2023 #TumorTakedownTailgate to benefit National Brain Tumor Society! Thank you for braving wind, rain, and hail to attend the 2023 Tumor Takedown Tailgate. Let’s not bury the lede, with some auction and donations outstanding, our unofficial total raised to benefit National Brain Tumor Society is … drum roll, please …

Just over $20,000 raised to benefit NBTS!! This brings our total raised over four years to more than $85,000!!

Wow. In Old Town Greenwood, Indiana, with a small and mighty team, we’ve raised money that rivals some of our larger community events in big cities throughout the country. What’s even better, many of you approached us this year with ideas for growing the event even bigger next year.

THANK YOU VENDORS, SPONSORS, ENTERTAINMENT, AND VOLUNTEERS

This event would not be possible without Mark and Katie Henrichs from Revery, Folktale, and Dashboard Food Truck. Please follow their social channels for your next meal or event. For those who don’t have the privilege of seeing behind the scenes like me, Katie was literally setting up the event space herself when we arrived, then she was braving rain to run power out to the tent for our emcee and live music.

Full House in the Tent

Mark prepped all the food and was then in the truck cooking for the event, with his chef from Revery, Juan. Plus Mark donated everyone’s first round of food. Incredible generosity!

Dashboard Food Truck parked outside Folktale

Andrew from Mashcraft set up the beer once, then set up the beer again, when we had to move the beer under the big tent when the rain started. Andrew’s wife, Brittany, was pouring beer for the event. They not only donated the beer but worked the event as volunteers! Please meet Adam and Whitney at Mashcraft soon!

Andrew from Mashcraft Brewing

Lisa, one of Whitney’s best friends, and the wife of one of Jack’s Donuts head guys, Dave, picked up and then carried boxes of donuts from the shop to her car to the event.

Jack’s Donuts

Another one of Whitney’s best friends, Bethany, arranged the Ramona donation! How good is that canned spritz?!

Gabe, one of Adam’s best friends, designed this year’s shirt and tracked down a sponsor, Stupid Rad Merch, to get the shirts at cost, then covered those costs to allow all shirt sales to go directly to NBTS, plus he and his wife, Amy, ran the merch table.

Sam, another one of Adam’s best friends, and Chad, Whitney’s brother, Adam’s brother in law, were carrying supplies, keeping the rain out of the tent, taking out the trash, and being just all around incredible volunteers and worked all day behind the scenes.

Left to Right: Gabe, Adam, and Sam

Lauren Casey, RTV Indy, thank you doesn’t cover it. Your professionalism, your passion for the event, and your friendship with Adam and Whitney shine through in all that you do. We are so grateful for you!

Lauren Casey RTV6 Indianapolis

Jay Elliott and Ben Tatum were incredible. Please follow Jay on Instagram and Ben on Instagram to catch them playing all around Indy, including at Smocktown, just behind Revery!

Lindsay Eichelman, the brilliance behind the event and planning, somehow balanced event planning for TTT4 in the midst of planning her own freaking wedding!! Lindsay, we love you, and none of this would be possible without you!

Left to Right: Kalen, Amy, Lindsay, and Lisa

Whitney, my spouse, event co-founder, and primary caregiver, for all the planning, hard work, preparation, and childcare organizing, thank you. You know the signs of my fatigue and symptoms, and you know when to boss me to sit down! We couldn’t pull this off without each other.

Thank you Boookends Financial Planning for your generous sponsorship, and thank you to all silent auction donors who make this event so special and hyper-local.

EVENT HIGHLIGHTS

The highlight of the event for me is connecting with other members of the local brain tumor community. I shared hugs of recent diagnosis, hugs of survivorship milestones, and hugs of grief. All of these things are part of the brain tumor experience, and living with this disease teaches you to embrace all the moments from the most heart wrenching to the joyful. Thank you to those who came out for the first time this year. You are part of our community, and we are part of yours, I am so happy that we have each other!

If you’re living with a brain tumor or caring for someone who is, you are welcome to check out the monthly, virtual support group that Adam co-facilitates. If you have lost someone to a brain tumor, you are welcome to attend the virtual grief support group. Both offered by NBTS.

FOLLOW US ALL YEAR LONG

Our Facebook page and Instagram are updated all year long, and for those not into social media, Adam’s personal blog is the source for updates throughout the year. Adam blogs pretty regularly about his life living with brain cancer.

THANK YOU!!

This event is successful because of YOU! There were several four-figure donations on our online donation page. That generosity just blows us away. Each time we see a donation of that size come through I get tears in my eyes. Truly you are changing the world, and we’re doing it together. For your generosity in any dollar amount, we wouldn’t be successful without all of you.

TTT Co-founder, Whitney
Fourth Annual Tumor Takedown Tailgate to Benefit National Brain Tumor Society

April 15th, 2023

Launched in 2018, with a break for Covid precautions, the #TumorTakedownTailgate is back for its fourth year to raise money for brain cancer research to fuel new treatments through giving to National Brain Tumor Society. To date, we’ve raised nearly $70k to benefit NBTS, with $22k last year alone. With your support, we can knock on the door of $100k total donated through our local fundraiser in little kown Old Town Greenwood, south of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Read on to see how you can be involved! We’ll cover event details, how you can donate, even if you can’t make it out for the event, and sponsorship opportunities that are still open! Plus tickets are on sale now!

We’re Back! TTT4

In 2016, Adam Hayden (hi, that’s me!) was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer called glioblastoma. This is a lethal disease, with near universal recurrence (or regrowth), even after aggressive surgical removal and a full course of chemotherapy and radiation. Despite treatment advances in several other cancer types, the survival statistics for brain cancer are largely unchanged over the past 30 years. Adam’s seven years of survival is without a doubt the exception, not the rule. Often this disease kills in months, not years.

Adam relearned to walk while inpatient at a rehab hospital following an aggressive awake brain surgery in May 2016.

Despite the grim prognosis, breakthrough treatments are truly on the horizon. NBTS is funding research on the cutting edge, like the DNA Damage Response Consortium that is funding a consortium of researchers from Yale Cancer Center, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, the University of Minnesota, and the University of California San Francisco. Your giving to benefit National Brain Tumor Society makes investments in this cutting edge research a reality.

Event Details: April 30, 2023, 2pm – 5pm EST

Hosted again by our friends at Folktale Greenwood, our 21+ event features food from Dashboard Food Truck, beer from local heroes Mashcraft Brewing, donuts from Jack’s, organic wine spritz-in-a-can Ramona, and music from Jay Elliott and Ben Tatum. Also, we have a new shirt design to unveil for TTT4 to mix it up for those who picked up a shirt last year – they sold out! Huge shout out to one of Adam’s best friends for 30 years, Gabe, and the awesome dudes at Stupid Rad Merch for the friend prices for charity. Punk rockers unite! These shirts are only available at the event!

TTT4 Shirt Designed by friend, Gabe, with a huge friend price from Stupid Rad merch

Plus we’re back with another incredible silent auction featuring local artwork, experience packages, a signed Pacers team ball, and more. Lauren Casey, WRTV Indy, returns as our emcee, and between music sets, hear from Adam, his spouse, Whitney, and other members of the brain tumor community who will share their experiences. Check out this great story Lauren did on Adam’s family.

This is an outdoor event in the parking lot outside of Folktale (adjacent to restaurant Revery), and public parking is available across the street. The food truck and picnic tables are arranged in the parking lot, and Tavern at the Tale, the bar at Folktale, will be open. Your $40 ticket includes two drink tickets and voucher for food at Dashboard. Additional tickets and beverages for purchase at Tavern at the Tale are available, but please do be responsible!

Adam and his wife, Whitney, speak during the TTT in 2019

We are striving for a cashless event. With QR codes and square readers, plan to have a phone or a card with you for the silent auction and t shirts. Tickets will be available at the door, but to help us plan for the event and to speed up the check-in process, please do purchase tickets in advance if possible!

Important to note, we are keeping the event 21+ again this year. We heard feedback that an all ages event would be great for families, but as parents ourselves, we want to keep safety top of mind. In the future we may consider expanding to a family-friendly event, but this year continues to be 21+.

Donation Opportunity if You Can’t Make it

Adam and Whitney love that we’ve met other families throughout the country impacted by brain tumors, and we know there’s no perfect date that accommodates busy Spring schedules. Many in our social network can’t attend in person, but we have a way to give for those who can’t attend.

Tax deductible donations can be made anytime at our dedicated event donation site! Using this site to donate automatically generates a receipt with NBTS’s 501c3 code for tax deduction. Plus we all get the satisfaction of watching those donations tick up! Telethon vibes, anyone?

For those whose employers offer matches for charitable giving, this is a great way to expand your individual donation. We are happy to help provide any supporting documentation if this is an option at your company. Just let us know!

Sponsorship Opportunities Still Open

Sponsorship opportunities are still open for donors and organizations who would like to support TTT4 beyond individual giving. Benefits include table space for Gold Sponsors, opportunities to speak during the event for Gold and Silver Sponsors, and comp registrations. Check out the tiers and be in touch if you’re interested in sponsoring.

ttt4-sponsorship Download

We Can’t Wait to See You!

Grab those tickets and let’s beat last year’s total of $22k during the fourth annual Tumor Takedown Tailgate!! Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for all event updates and info! See you on the 30th!
The Thief of the Present

September 12th, 2022

When I spoke with my palliative care physician about a referral to a mental health professional, my doc said they knew just the person.

A little scene-setting never hurts: The palliative care offices are tucked neatly between Senior Care and Optometry on the sixth floor, overlooking a commons area between the county hospital where I receive services and the children’s hospital across the green space.

The towering glass facade of Eskenazi reflects the city back onto itself on the near-West side of downtown. The reflected cement and steel city outside these futuristic, ten stories of tinted glass signals the bold proclamation that all deserve access to the best care in the best possible setting.

Checking in for appointments at the front desk greeting visitors as they step, roll, or shuffle from the “green elevators,” I am asked, “Optometry?” “Palliative care,” I reply. I am handed the clipboard and directed to door D. I glance while I walk to see “Senior Care” in narrow, sans serif font mounted in sharp black text on the clean, white walls. Diagnosed at 34 years old for a disease with a median age of diagnosis of 64, sitting in the Senior Care waiting area brings a grin to my face.

A few questions into the anxiety questionnaire, I snort with laughter. The GAD-7 asks the survey respondent to circle the number corresponding to the prompt: “Feeling afraid as if something awful might happen,” ranging from “Not at all” to “Nearly every day.”

Something awful might happen? Something awful did happen! I have fucking terminal cancer!

“Most people with cancer feel like something awful might happen, so we take that into account when scoring,” my mental health professional reported back while I took at least half of our first session to provide the Director’s cut commentary to my anxiety and depression questionnaire reponses. In fact, whether I always want to hear it or not, telling me just how unremarkable I am seems to be my psychologist’s prime directive! I mean that both to be funny and serious. I benefit from a kind but firm level-setting that reminds me while we each are unique snowflakes, there are only three phases of H2-0.

So that there isn’t a question: While my surgeon and oncologist have kept me alive, it’s this clinician who offers healing.

Afraid that something awful might happen is the lens through which many of us cancer patients probably see the world. It’s the attitude that I’ve adopted, or at least adapted to having. If not fear, acknowledgement that something awful might happen. This feels like a necessary awareness. It’s floating around somewhere with the scanxiety we feel before routine MRI scans, like my last one on August 22, 2022.

You have an awareness like this, too. You love to tell us cancer patients about it: “I could get hit by a bus tomorrow!” I.e., “I fear something awful might happen.” Of course, that’s not really the same. The bus metaphor is wholly unhelpful. It centers you in the attempt to comfort me. It projects your awareness of life’s uncertainty onto my very real certainty of facing an existential threat. If we were at the arcade playing Frogger you may say, “I could get hit by a bus!” I’d say, “Me too!” But when you’re talking to me about the bus, what you mean to express is that my unexpected and serious diagnosis has given you reason to reflect on the precious nature of life, and you should probably just say that. No bus needed.

My recent scan was stable.

It’s taken me this damn long to tell anybody that news outside of my close circle. And don’t get me wrong, it’s good news! So why then has it been so tough for me to let it out? Whitney and I posted our usual MRI selfie. The scan went according to protocol. I met with my oncologist. What’s the big deal about throwing up a quick Facebook post, appreciating the likes, in turn, liking the comments, and we can all move on with our lives?

The difficulty with me telling you the news of my stable scan is grounded in this: We can all move on with our lives. In fact, the harshest (but most liberating) lesson that each cancer patient must learn, bigger than that, the lesson taught to all when we have the good sense to pay close attention to our mortality is that brutal and freeing truth: Life moves on.

The liberation comes through acceptance that our friends, family, jobs, soccer clubs, and microbreweries don’t depend on us for their survival, hell, even for their success and joy. That all are sad in our passing is expected. The liberation comes when we choose to be passionate and powerful in the present moment because with or without us, life moves on. When we accept that, and I mean truly get it deep in our bones, we strive for a just world that liberates all to be passionate and powerful in their present lives and speak against those who would deny others this power. True power uplifts.

But the acknowledgment; the fear. We become paralyzed. We put off sharing otherwise good news.

In the gratitude of good news is the fear that something awful may be coming to spoil it. We begin to mitigate our due joy for fear of it slipping through our grasp. We mute our celebration and measure our smiles. We’ve dropped enough jaws at medical conferences and waiting rooms with our long survival that we dare not tempt death with loud applause.

Feeling as if something awful may happen.

The could-be has robbed us of the is. The possible is a thief of the present. This has all been hard to see, but thankfully, I’m neatly tucked in between Senior Care and Optometry.
My Sabbatical Year: Release and a Vision of a Just Society

June 10th, 2022

The Sabbatical Year

It’s my shmita year. My sabbatical year. My year of release; a year to let go. Curious? Confused? Intrigued? Smiling? Read on.

This month, June 2022, June 10 to be precise, marks six years after I was picked up by a medical transport van from the “brain trauma unit” at an acute inpatient rehab hospital on the northside of Indianapolis, with Whitney, to attend our first office visit with my neuro-oncologist, nearly two weeks following surgery. My significant motor impairment following brain surgery landed me in a rehab hospital to relearn how to walk, bathe, dress, and feed myself. We knew the tumor was large and appeared “mean” (my surgeon’s words), but we hadn’t yet received the official diagnosis–the pathology.

On June 10, 2016, we heard the word glioblastoma for the first time. This arbitrary date serves as a surrogate marker for when I “got” brain cancer, and so we recognize this date as significant. In truth, both the imaging and my surgeon’s perspective suggest a non-malignant brain tumor had been growing for months (years?) that ultimately underwent a “malignant transformation” to become an aggressive malignant brain tumor.

Patients identify different dates of significance to revere their diseases (In a Kierkegaardian fear and trembling sort of reverence). For some, the date of surgery, often a craniotomy, marked by a “cranniversary” each year. For others, it is the date of diagnosis. Others, still, may point to their first seizure, or the day they went to the Emergency Department with a headache unlike any they ever experienced. Consistent with the devastation of this disease, too many patients die before any significant date returns on the calendar, and it is the date of death that sets a new rhythm to life.

The common thread is the significance of a date–not the date, but the significance of time: time passed; time remaining.

Regular readers may have picked up on my agitating in my last two posts. “I’m Telling You for the Last Time” carried a sort of urgent finality to it. The next post, “I Don’t Know How to Write About Brain Tumors,” shared a struggle for identity. These posts, as has this blog done since its inception, is a protracted balancing of two competing attitudes: The urgency of the moment when the future is uncertain juxtaposed with a slow awakening to life and what matters in the midst of its end. The former calls for reaction and the latter, for response.

My Shmita Year

The shmita, or Sabbatical year, is a tradition among the ancient Hebrew people, with contemporary analogue. The so-called Sabbatical year, the year of release, like most of Jewish tradition, finds time, neither place nor edifice, to be of central importance. The six days of creation, and the seventh for rest. Building a sanctuary in time is how Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel described the weekly Sabbath, or Shabbat, a 24 hour period of release from work. The shmita year is also on a cycle of sevens: seven years. Born of the agricultural society of ancient Israel, the Hebrew people were called to work the land for six years and let the land lie fallow on the seventh.

This month I embark on my seventh year of survival with glioblastoma. For six years I have worked the land of my disease, and now I let the field lie fallow. Coincidentally, in Israel, it is the shmita year, Jewish calendar year 5782, beginning September 2021 through year 5783, beginning September 2022.

The shmita year is not only a year to let the land lie fallow, but connected to the deep roots of justice and care for the poor and the other that is at the heart of people who wrote and are described within the Hebrew Bible, “In the Shmita year, debts are to be forgiven, agricultural lands to lie fallow, private land holdings to become open to the commons, and staples such as food storage and perennial harvests to be freely redistributed and accessible to all” (My Jewish Learning).

Contemporary movements within Judaism are applying the ancient Sabbatical year to new traditions and challenges: “Shmita, with its dual acknowledgment and transcendence of the agricultural and economic realm, offers an opportunity for social reset and renewal to the entire Jewish world – and beyond” (Hazon).

Hazon states plainly: Shmita is the vision of a just society.

In pursuit of a just society, I’ve found that I’ve traded my own pursuit of justice for to-do lists, the strange competitiveness for patient advocate grants and scholarships for selection in certain conferences, conversations with agents and editors about publishing work, and the sense that if you say “No” to one opportunity, whatever it is, you may not get the invite for the next.

In the commodification of people’s lived experience and capitalism’s pursuit of more, shmita is yet more powerful: “In a world of ‘get up and do,’ not everyone is equal; however, in a world of ‘rest and restrain’ everyone is equal. And this [equality] is the root of peace” (paraphrased from the Shmita Sourcebook and this commentary).

The Jewish Pastor’s Kid

I share family roots of both Christianity (Dad’s side) and Judaism (Mom’s side). I am a Jewish pastor’s kid. I say that with a grin because it probably gives plenty of cause for certain stripes of both Jews and Chtisitans to be perplexed, if not dubious. At any rate, it is the historical context of these traditions, the geopolitics of ancient Southwest Asia and Northern Africa that feature most prominently in its development, and the storied history of Biblical authorship that compel me to study and discuss. There is theology, good and bad, that falls out of the historical project, and the explicit and implied Christian anti-semitism that conceives of the Hebrew Bible only as a marker pointing to the Christian mesianic figure, Jesus.

A central theme that I identify in this history is liberation for all people. I see myself with a unique set of skills and life experiences: growing up in the church, discovering my Jewish heritage, studying in college and synagogue settings, committing myself deeply to justice, viewing the world anew as a disabled and chronically ill person, and recognizing that with white supremacy posing an existential threat to American democracy, the liberation of Jewish people in Christian spaces is one way to combat persistent anti-stemitism.

In the release from the work I have known, it is pursuing these themes that I view as part of my reset, and to take this work seriously, I need to negotiate certain trade-offs.

Rest and Release

I enter my seventh year with this disease with rest in mind. I am declaring an intention to step away from the blog for a time. I am not sure what that time will be. I’ll say this: Glioblastology began as a way for me to process my experience as a newly diagnosed person with brain cancer. The blog has transformed with me as I gained further insight and experience. Now, the time has come to lean into other facets of my life that could use continued study and internal transformation in service of a just society. I could be back here next week, but more likely, the rest will be longer.

Thank you for toiling with me for these six years. More posts will come, in time.