I think everyone was amazed at my reaction to the chemo. It didn't really scare me at all. After all, I'd gotten allergy shots once a week, every week from the time I was three until I was about ten. To me, this seemed like the grown-up version of allergy shots. You go in, get your meds and you're eventually all better.

Besides the common problems that everyone knows about, I had one of the IV medicines that could cause mouth sores. To combat that eventuality, I had to have a popsicle in my mouth while the nurse pushed that drug into my system. Something about the cold in the mouth keeping the sores from starting. I dunno. Hey, I got a free popsicle every couple of weeks, who's complaining?

My appetite gradually came back. My friends pestered me constantly about eating, and sadly, I think I gained all of the weight back that I'd lost. I would have been happy had that stayed off. *sigh*

I never did really lose my hair. Thank goodness. This was the one thing that just terrified me. My sister even sent me a box of hats for Christmas, just in case. At any rate, my hair did thin out and it was about to become pretty obvious that Super-Chemo-Girl was losing hair, but by that point the chemo was over with. Afterwards, my hair grew back even more thick than it had been prior to chemo! (There's always a silver lining somewhere.)

I never did get nauseous really. There were a few times when it was iffy. I can remember thinking a few times near the end of treatments, "Oh boy, the honeymoon is over and the side effects are coming." But, I popped a Compazine at the first sign that my stomach was possibly unhappy, and that took care of it.

<GROSS ALERT>
Ooops. Except for that one time that I did something stupid. You see, I've never been one much for breakfast. I'll drink something first thing, but I almost never eat anything. Well, the day after I got out of the hospital (or my first chemo at the clinic, I don't remember now), I drank about for glasses of limeade for breakfast. All that acid on an absolutely empty stomach.

Umm, throwing up limeade is really acidic, painful and just plain gross. But, like I said, that was a bone-headed move anyway. I'm not sure the chemo had a lot to do with that.
</GROSS ALERT>

The nurses in the chemo room seemed to love me. I almost never complained about anything since nothing ever really bothered me; I loved talking with them. We had fun, relatively speaking. For them, I think it was a relief to see someone with a positive outlook and a happy-go-lucky attitude.

And they thought the Super-Chemo-Girl moniker was hysterical. So did my doctor.

All in all, chemo was not so bad for me. A minor annoyance every two weeks. I didn't particularly like the IV in my hand near the end -- it was starting to get pretty painful -- but it wasn't all that bad. Most important, I felt great. I hadn't felt this good for at least two years! Two years of feeling constantly under the weather. And now I felt healthy. This was cool.

The year of reprieve >