Five Times Around the Sun

Five Times Around the Sun

It was this time five years ago that Doctor David Ebb of Massachusetts General Hospital peered at the screen of his computer and declared that Orion's brain tumor had vanished after two cycles of chemotherapy. Four more cycles and then a summer of radiation was yet to come but for me the tide had turned and victory was no more than a long slog ahead.

I prefer not to think of that time. Instead I revel that Orion looks great, sounds great and is doing great work as a PhD candidate in physics at the University of Michigan. He is on the team, LIGO, the Large Interferometer Gravitational Observatory that just announced the discovery of gravitational waves. A nice little accessible article is http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gravitational-waves-exist-heres-how-scientists-finally-found-them

In our family we each mark Orion's ordeal at a different time. For Sally it is diagnosis day, December 24th, For me it is March 1 and the chemical rout of the tumor. For Orion it is the end of treatment.