This morning, Carla and I went for a run through the bumpy streets of San Carlos. We were up and out of the house and on the road by 7:30. Just a tick before the Mexican sun had time to really get its back into producing the day's heat. There was nothing remarkable about our 4K or so distance or our pace. I felt good, so I assume the Kenyans and the Tarahumara fuel their runs on a small coffee and a chocolate covered biscotti too. I can tell you that cobblestones look picturesque, but are painfulesque to run on. The momentous part of our jog, was that after nine months away, my wife and I were back in Mexico, feeling happy, healthy and energetic.

At the end of last July we had returned from a glorious month of sailing in the Bay of LA to put our boat on the hard preparatory to a month long trip back to Washington State. We bought a 2000 Nissan minivan, and our plan was to drive up North, visit family and friends, but mostly to celebrate Carla's mother's 90th birthday. In September we would return to the boat, sell the minivan, and head south toward Central America and the Panama Canal.

Visits to the doctor in Bellingham and Seattle in regard to hip pain and a small lump led Carla through a variety of doctors, therapists, scans, and misdiagnosis'. It took us months, a few biopsies, and even a surgery, before the correct diagnosis was apparently reached. Stage IV non small cell lung cancer which had spread from one lung to under her arm to half a dozen bone sites, in particular her hip. That Carla, an athlete and tennis instructor who would never stay in the same room as anyone smoking a cigarette, should end up with any form of lung cancer was a Job-reminiscent reminder of the idiotic, blind and gibbering nature of Fate.

I like to write blog posts about my family's sailing and traveling. It is in particular the misadventures and my own infinite string of errors, which I find the most amusing to write about. In the corporate world it is nearly axiomatic for upwardly mobile managers to never admit errors, but in the Cruising community, that attitude would either get you killed (if you can't recognize your errors you can't learn) or at least make you dull company at the Cocktail Hour. As any extended cruising sailor knows, when you talk to the people back home, they assume your days are spent lying on the beach and drinking rum from coconuts. When you try to explain that those things never really happen, they neither listen nor care. What they want to know about are Storms. For the modern cruising sailor, talking about being in a storm is like talking about clogging a toilet and having it overflow: you probably did something embarrassing and regrettable. Bad weather is like a massive traffic jam for a commuter: that's why you have a radio. You go around the problem or wait it out, and if stuck in it you just react calmly and with common sense. This is why I assume all sail-blogs, storm free as they generally are, will be exclusively read by other sailors. I mean picture the farm couple in West Virginia:

Clem: Come quick Honey Pot, they're havin' engine trouble agin!
Mabel: It's prolly the fuel system. It's always the fuel system.
Clem: Yup. You'd think it would be more 'electrical, what with all the corrosion possibilities in moist marine air.
Mabel: Yup. Leastways they cleared up their IT prollems, so's they can keep postin'. I'd hate fer to miss out on the next time one o'their young 'uns overflows a public el banyo!

Chronic breakdowns and shopping problems really are the grist for the sail-bloggers mill, and the real stuff of sailors talk at Happy Hour. Seldom are the problems health related, since cruising on a boat seems to keep everyone pretty darn healthy and fit. So, the medical misadventures seemed like it would provide fodder for lots of blog posts as we struggled to get Carla in better health.

As we sat in waiting rooms for doctors, and for tests, and for long hours of chemotherapy treatments, I would envision writing 'The Funny Cancer Blog'. The more things go wrong, the more I normally, eventually, see the funny side. If bad news can make you laugh, then cancer should have been a comedic gold mine.

An hilarious cancer blog. How great would that be! Cancer patients would love it. Cancer patient spouses, family and friends would love it. Laughter is the best medicine, well, maybe it is a half step behind Tarceva. But talk about trending! It would get so popular that I would have to get my own domain name like 4CancerYuks.org. I would be bribed into putting out a book, 'Cancer Cutups!' Then I would effortlessly merge with the Inter-web's legion of cancer 'authorities' who, like me, have no discernible science background other than the ability to operate a keyboard. As I looked out from the chemo ward at Swedish Hospital and across the downtown Seattle skyline toward Puget Sound, I could almost feel the social media world coming to embrace me like a warm bubblebath. I would tweet things to my numberless followers. Follow Me! #Tumorjokes. I would learn to stop spelling words completely. I would put out glossy hardbound sequels, like 'More Laughing at Cancer', 'Christmas with Cancer', and inevitably, 'The Comedy Cancer Cookbook.' I could then expand my whole new genre of disease shocked humor: 'Funny as a Heart Attack' and 'It Stroke Me Funny'.

And yet, months rolled by and I couldn't write a word. Cancer comedy must have the minute atomic life span of some nano particle in a research collider. It all quickly reverts to the insidious, self-mutilating, poison that is the essence of the disease. I could see the funny side of moments such as when Carla, her head lolling a bit on the drugged up ride home from Chemo, would come to enough to slurrily criticize my driving or my route choice before her chin dropped down again to her chest, but it never quite formed into anything actually, funny. Cancer drowns fun, chokes wise perspective, empties economies, and kills people.

At the Corinthian Yacht Club in Seattle over drink specials and five dollar dinner plates, Carla and I talked with another sailor, he back from Mexico to deal with a pernicious form of rectal cancer. We exchanged stories of the astounding kindness of people, and the selfless gifts of love and help we received, often from old friends, but occasionally from near strangers. We agreed that it sometimes seemed in the face of this terrible misfortune, that the Universe appeared to be busy working behind the scenes to repair and soften the tear in reality that is a cancer cell. He talked about the amazing positive changes in the way he looked at life, at other people, at his own body, and the world around him. 'I've heard it said and written that cancer can be a gift.' He paused. 'I know what they mean, and I get it, but I can't go that far. ' He paused. 'No, Cancer is not a gift. It's shit.'

I told him the story of Carla going to a pharmacy at some supermarket to pick up a prescription that she needed to have before her first chemo treatment. They were mostly antihistamines and other things which ultimately worked perfectly to keep away any nausea during the chemo, unlike the old days of constant vomiting. Carla handed the prescription to the pharmacist, a middle-aged East Indian woman, who read it and then paused, realizing what it was for. 'Oh' she said looking up, 'you have cancer.' She then reached across the counter, hugged Carla's arm, looked her in the eyes and said, 'I love you.'

Tears burst out of the sailors eyes. After a brief moment he was back to normal, and he waived a damp napkin towards his eyes. 'This happens now. Stories like that set it off.'

'To me too' I say.

We confer. Neither of us were historically much for crying. Not a macho or emotionally stunted way, (we assured each other) it was just that tears weren't something we were particularly wired for. But something about the nature of cancer and the way it snakes in and violates our emotional circulatory system had left some exposed and broken piping. Something about these exposed places snapped open our tear ducts like a mouse trap during certain moments of human connection. I told him how I tried to thank my friends Ed and Jo who had literally given my family a beautiful home to live in for free while we were in Seattle getting Carla treatment. I simply was unable to get out two sentences of gratitude before instantly switching to a crying and having my throat constrict to the point that within five seconds I was blind and gasping. He nods and we both sip our drinks and let a little air back in our lungs. It occurred strange to me to be having this conversation in a room where over the years I have spent so many hours pounding post sailboat race beers.

'It is like some witch's curse,' I say finally, 'that I am unable to thank people for all their tremendous kindness toward my family.' I think of my friends Dan and Susan who took Carla and I out to monthly dinners at a nice restaurant we could not have afforded, just so we could get away for awhile to have a sublime break from the daily grind of the war on cancer. I think of all the emails, calls, visits, gifts, offers of work and fundraisers. 'They must go home and think what an ungrateful jerk I am.'

'No they don't' he said. 'It's like with the pharmacist and your wife. You don't think to thank your kids for being who the are. There is something about Cancer, that makes us all family.' He paused and grimaced. 'But I still won't call it a Gift.'

None of us know how many runs we have left together in the sunshine. Or how many opportunities we have to express love or to help others. As my tennis friend Grant, who beat another very difficult kind of cancer, never fails to say with feeling, 'Today is a great day!' So I am thankful and grateful for each days chance to run. That is the gift.