On this 8th anniversary of my mother’s death from lung cancer, let me tell you a survival story. I was in the crosshairs of my TrueBeam friend three times over the last week, and everything went according to plan. In addition, I had a liquid biopsy which determined that the tumor burden in my blood is undetectable. Both my radiation and medical oncologists met with me to reassure me that the current strategy of “stay the course with current treatment and do the radiation whack-a-mole dance as needed” is indeed working.
As I lay in the half sarcophagus in the shape of myself, I was thinking back to my library school internship at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. How far we’ve come; from a mile-long particle-flinger that runs under the freeway to a cute room-sized beam-bender able to hit nano targets. Science!
