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Weather: cloudy, rainy in the evening
Breakfast & lunch@home, nothing particular
Dinner:Kamonegi, Mori@Sobadokoro Nakamura(?), Ikebukuro

I was awoken by a nightmare. In the dream my parents and relatives were busily preparing a table of food to celebrate my recovery. Suddenly Mark came into the scene, took me into a dark corridor outside the shoji sliding door, hugged me tightly and said, "I have cancer." It shouldn't be true, but anything can happen to our lives; life is, after all, unfair. My struggle to respond to him calmly woke me up.

I know why I had that dream. Mark has been complaining of stomach discomfort for the past few days. Coincidentally, it turned out that he was feeling particularly uncomfortable this morning. Also, he mentioned that he might have some internal bleeding, judging from the color of the stool.

Even though my cancer has become a sort of distant memory (it seems that to push a bad memory into oblivion is a self-defense mechanism to heal and survive), it left a deep fear and trauma in our minds. We learned that anything could happen in our lives. We called his grant office here for medical information and made an appointment at a clinic in Hiroo which frequently treats patients who are expatriates.

To our relief, Mark seems to be suffering from simple acid reflux or digestion problem. And the suspected bleeding (black stool) seems to have come from a pasta dish with a sauce made using dark squid ink that we had at a local restaurant a couple of days ago!!