Mel and I grabbed the train from Ottawa this morning and passed a pleasant few hours hurtling through the countryside en route to Toronto.

I've traveled to Toronto to attend a meeting of the Ovarian Cancer Canada Board of Directors tomorrow. Mel came along to do some visiting in the provincial capital.

This afternoon, I took the opportunity to meet with a friend, who graciously accepted my last-minute invitation to get together. Not only that, but she treated me to a lovely meal. Who does that? She does. She's an incredible woman: kind, generous, reflective, inclusive, grateful. All the things you would want to have in a friend.

In addition to sending me off with the remaining dessert, she passed along a book that she had recently finished and loved: No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler. I plunged into it as soon as I got back to my hotel room.

Before Bowler was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer at the age of 35, she believed that life was a series of choices, that you could have it all as long as you learned to conquer your limits. After her diagnosis, however, Bowler came to believe that there is no formula for life: "We live and we are loved and we are gone," she writes.

She also takes issue with the multi-billion-dollar wellness industry, which preaches that "everything is possible if you will only believe." "But I cannot outwork or outpace or outpray my cancer," she counters. "I can't dispel it with a can-do attitude."

I've only just begun to read Bowler's book, but it already resonates with me. And my conversation with my friend this afternoon reinforced my belief that life is a combination of luck and influence. Where we're born, who our parents are, the colour of our skin, the way our brains work, whether we inherit a gene mutation that predisposes us to cancer—these are all things over which we have no control. Nevertheless, we do have some influence over our lives—what we make of our circumstances, the friends we choose, the commitments we make to learning, the stories we tell ourselves, the steps we take to reduce our risk of illness.

Unluckily, I inherited a gene mutation that led to my developing ovarian cancer. Luckily, that same mutation made my tumours more responsive to chemotherapy and opened up an additional treatment option. While it was my choice to avail myself of that option, it was—once again—luck that has seemingly made the drug work for me when it doesn't work for all patients.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's meeting of the Ovarian Cancer Canada Board of Directors, both seeing my colleagues and delving into the subject matter.

À demain.