Canary reunion in California

Prompted by an invitation to attend the Canary Foundation’s Annual Symposium at Stanford, I made a short but sweet trip back to the Bay Area.  I arrived in California a few days before the conference so that I could spend the weekend hanging out with the growing Dean clan (Jed, Sara, Esther, Beatrice, and girl #3, expected in August).  Friday night, I received a huge surprise when we were sitting down for dinner and the doorbell rang… there stood Jerel, with flowers and a big grin on his face.  He had realized at the last minute that it made just as much sense to fly to his Chicago meeting later that week from Shanghai via San Francisco rather than via Brussels. Lucky me!

It felt just like old times as we passed the weekend hiking, discussing/debating, and feasting with the Deans.  The girls were cuter than ever, and as always, full of energy that we love to watch them burn off running circles around the house or dancing freestyle to pop music (Rhianna's “All the Single Ladies” still tops the Dean girls’ charts).  Bea stopped so much traffic at the SF Ferry building with her cuteness that we debated giving her a collection bucket!  We also made a fun trip to the SF Exploratorium with Stephen and his two little ones, where I tried and failed to get over my ‘gyrophobia’ (long story).

I had a great time at the Canary Symposium, connecting with old friends and colleagues and nourishing my hungry brain.  A few themes emerged from the meeting - that we should devote resources to identifying ‘pathognomonic’ markers (not produced by any normal cells) and that while we believe that there is a real window of opportunity for early detection, the tumors are likely to be very small during that window.  Another theme of the meeting was enjoying good wine, thanks to one of Canary’s supporters who dug into his amazing wine cellar for the occasion.