Yuri and I looked at each other and smiled.  I stretched to the very tip of my toes to hug him as hard as I could.  I cried, Yuri held, I think he had some tears too along with a smile that reached the moon.  We knew a major medical discovery had just been made. 

An explosion of discovery!

            Just then Mitch opens the door and sees our joy of discovery and asks in his always quizative voice, “what’s going on in here”?  I was the first to fess up….

            “Mitch, I , ah, I just tried using the TDU while, well… while… standing”….  I saw the blood run from Mitch’s face yet I also saw his investigative mind running wildly in screams of needing to know – what happened.  “Cheryl” Mitch said very seriously, “You know that standing is completely out of the protocol, right?   “Well, yes I do, but, Mitch, I think we need to put it in because… it worked!  Just wait until you see this!!!” 

            Mitch looks to Yuri for confirmation of the great discovery, firmly discusses the naughtiness of what I talked Yuri into doing, and then assessed the possibilities.  It was clear that all together, we had to run another trial to show Mitch exactly what we found – which, as with the sitting trials – provided the same limited balance retention effect after the TDU was removed from my tongue.  I thought Mitch was going to implode with researcher joy!  Mitch was the one who developed the theory that the TDU may alleviate balance problems.  He realized this after the city bus he was riding slid on a wintery road rounding a corner and Mitch fell from his seat.  Mitch, ill with a virus was experiencing the perils of imbalance, which caused him to lose his sense of connection to his environment, and fall out of that seat, much like my world.  For Mitch, in the world of research, his theory had just been proved and reached reality.  The TDU could indeed restore balance! 

           Even though still in the infancy of research, with wide eyed excitement and possibilities streaming from our minds, the very essence of this discovery permeated every nook and cranny of that tiny lab.  It was one of the best “what if” meetings I have ever taken part in.  And yes, the protocol was revised and approved…

            “Now what?” I asked.  “Where do we go from here?”  “I for one cannot wait to tell Paul, my son, my family!”  I could not wait to feel that stillness again.  I could not wait to be embraced in the silence of stillness.  I for one could not wait to have a TDU of my very own…

I had found peace…