Dorothy: We melted her! Wizard of Oz: Oh, you liquidated her, eh? Very resourceful!

Okay here we go. Two MRI scans, one from January 18 and one from last night after 2 chemo cycles. Very dramatic results. On the left of these dyptichs is the scan from last night, on the right from January 18th before chemo began. Looking on the right images you can see a central white object. That is the 4 cm. tumor. Additionally, the tumor had spread or disseminated along the midline of the brain, spreading into the ventricles, those reservoirs of cerebrospinal fluid that act as reservoirs and pressure regulators. A bad prognosis!

On the left images you can see that the tumor is gone! Incredible stuff but the best part is that in some of these rare cases there resides a disgusting teratoma, a tumor that is not phased by chemotherapy or radiation. So horrible, Stephen King wrote a novel about one- The Dark Half. Read it if you dare. There does not seem to be one present! So no more surgery!!

So this cancer tumor, malignant, has apparently been destroyed by these awful chemicals. Seems mostly to have been comprised of primitive germ cells, which wandered off track in the first few days of Orion's fetal development. These germ cells are "exquisitely" sensitive to chemo and radiation. So far so good. What little is known of Orion's rare species of cancers is that the full six cycles of chemo MUST be given and the full radiation course must follow.

Cancer is grotesque in that is cellular, hard to see the little bastards. A single cell can escape, wounded from these first washes of carboplatin, etoposide and iphosmaside and return years later, it's vows renewed.

So on he presses using the kind of warfare that I approve of- scorched earth, salted fields, no prisoners. Orion's price? The danger of permanent physical damage to his hearing, his kidneys, his liver, his bladder and the dark possibility of future cancer caused by radiation, like the Curies. Is it love or toxic radiation?

All hail SCIENCE!