Done With Cancer, Chemo, Christopher Timpone Welcomed Home

After a long six months, filled with trips back and forth from New York City, in and out of hospitals, Christopher Timpone sat on his couch Saturday morning watching college lacrosse with his cancer and chemotherapy behind him.

The nine-year-old Aquebogue boy was welcomed home with a fire and police escort on Friday afternoon - meeting his family at exit 70 on the Long Island Expressway - followed by a 'welcome home' party with family and friends galore.

"That was very cool," he said Saturday. "We had a lot of people over. It was good to see my family and friends and everything."

Having beat a rare form of bone cancer - Ewing's Sarcoma, which required taking bone from his leg to his jaw to remove the cancer - the avid athlete and oldest of three boys is just looking forward to getting things back to normal again.

"He wants to resume being a kid again, to get back out there and play, but we still need to take it slow," said his dad, Tom Timpone. "He's still weak and a little fragile. He's lucky if he weighs 45 pounds. That's what chemo does to you."

One morning during Labor Day weekend last year, said his mother Kathleen recently, Christopher "just woke up one day with a lump on his face." Following a diagnosis from doctors, he underwent nine separate treatments of chemotherapy. In January, the cancer was removed.

Between last fall and Friday, members of the Riverhead community rallied to support the Timpone family, whose mantra became "No one fights alone."

on a Sunday night in mid-January for a fund raiser organized by the high school's Council for Unity, and about a month later Christopher's classmates at Aquebogue Elementary School to raise money to defray medical costs.

"It's a big relief" to make it to this point, said Timpone's father, Tom. "I told him from the beginning that I could have taken the cancer from him that day I would have. Since I can't, we fought together and got it done ... And it's a beautiful thing - really amazing what this community does."