It was over twenty years ago that a certain father asked himself this very question as he watched over his young daughter in the throes of pediatric cancer. That father’s name was Dan Olson, and he was a lawyer who had been leading a peaceful existence in the American countryside. It was an inauspicious winter morning when misfortune reared its head in the Olson household. The three members of the Olson family were eating breakfast when Dan’s seven-year-old daughter, Linda, suddenly complained that her back hurt. Her cheeks were puffed out with chocolate corn flakes as she spoke. “It hurts here,” she said, tracing a line from her back to her right side with her tiny hand. “It’s like I’m being squeezed.” “Did you do something funny?” asked Linda’s mother, Mary. The unusual specificity of the complaint left her feeling worried, and she began to fuss over her daughter. “It’s probably just growing pains,” said Dan, without looking up from the documents he was perusing.
