Mom: How do you know what questions to ask me?

<pause>

Me: Hmmm...like which question?

<pause>

Mom: Like 'do I want to have dinner?'

<pause>

Me: well...we were making dinner and thought you might like some too.

<silence>

Mom: Clever.

So, we're sitting in the crowded waiting room and I look over and my Mom has put her sunglasses on. Since she sometimes gets a little overwhelmed and confused at doctor's offices, I think she must not realize she has them on. "Mom, you know you have your shades on, right?" She nods and there is no change in her expression. Clearly, she has no intention of taking them off. My sister and I look at each other, pause for a moment then in unison pull out and don our sunglasses too. Of course, I pull out my phone and take a shot.

Everyone in the waiting room stares as if we have lost our minds. Perhaps, we have. We don't care.

Sent from my iPhone

Sent from my iPhone

Sent from my iPhone

Sent from my iPhone

Sent from my iPhone

Today was Day 17 of 33. We brought a dozen Jalapeño Cheese bagels for the Radiology staff (seriously, that was the request) and as we departed it was apparent that our radiation posse needed a treat as well. What are the odds that right down the street we would encounter the perfect place to celebrate our small milestone on this long journey?

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I am now almost certain that we need more radiation for better health. - John Cameron

Without radiation from the sun, our space-rock home would be unimaginably cold (think absolute zero on the surface).

No plants. No liquid water. No breathable air.

No us.

But stoke the fire on our sun-star to just the right temperature and it emits precisely the amount of radiated energy needed to perform one of the coolest magic tricks in the known universe right here on the outer layer of this tiny blue-green sphere...

Us.

As natural born magicians, somewhere along the way we learned to create radiation for ourselves. We discovered that by moderating the amount of energy we fire at one another, we could create miraculous benefits or indescribable damage. In tiny amounts, we get radio and GPS. In larger doses our cells vaporize in nuclear explosions. 

And somewhere just above the setting that gives us microwave ovens, we've found a level that if aimed more or less into our tumors, ruins reproduction for the runaway cells without completely destroying healthy ones and killing us. How ironic that some cancer cells trace their missing self-control to the accumulated damage that accrues throughout our lifetimes from our environment including...of course...from radiation.

It is both our most fundamental lifeforce and our destroyer. Our Birth Mother and our Slayer. And in modern radiation therapy -- for ever so briefly -- it can also be our Healer.

Yet for whatever good radiation does in helping to rid our body of seemingly immortal and malevolent cancer cells, it asks for a great deal in return. Hair, memory, immunity, appetite, strength and vitality must all be offered in sacrifice to receive a temporary reprieve from nature's ultimate Master Force. 

As any cancer patient who has been treated with it can tell you, radiation is a perfect synthesis of good and evil.