Chemo/ radiation

one week down. i've finished one week of chemo and radiation. i go for 10 more weeks. i get chemo every monday morning followed up with 40 minutes of radiation. i do radiation every week, 5 days a week. puking, or not. i have to show up. i go in for fluids every two days and get my blood drawn three times a week. i get b12 shots twice a week. for chemo i get an iv of aloxi and decadron which are both anti nausea, mannitol and cisplatin , and a drip of magnesium sulfate and iron. i get this pumped into my body every monday, which takes about 4 hours at a time. i sit in a room full of lazy boy chairs and IV hangers, with mostly older people who look like they might be on their last leg. some of them are. the waiting room is full of these patients' other halves exchanging stories of WWII and their wives latest battles with cancer. my first experience with chemo was an instant dose of my new reality. that everyone in that room with me could agree upon one thing. that whatever chemo takes away is still better that losing your life. and that's why we all keep showing up. the man that sat to my left started talking to me first. he was thin and fragile looking. he wore a baseball cap, but had told me that none of his hair had actually fallen out yet. he told me that cancer messes with your brain. at the time i was like, "yea, yea of course it does." i quickly found out that at that time, i had no idea what that meant. i would soon find out. he talked to me about his family, and his 14 year old daughter, how he use to coach little league until he got cancer. he told me how he stopped telling people that he even had cancer because everyone started looking at him like he was going to die. he just couldn't handle that. he also told me that he is always the youngest one in the room. he is 47. the guy to my right was born in 1939. his grandfather died from prostate cancer. his mother died from cancer 30 years ago, and his father died from cancer 10 years before his mother. cancer runs in his family. and the equal opportunity destroyer that cancer is, it was also going to try and take the life of this man. but this man had a unique relationship with chemo. he loves it and hates it. it makes him feel terrible, but he does not do it in vain, as he is the first person with cancer in his family that actually has a fighting chance. thank you modern medicine. then there was me. i'm 27. i have Stage III cancer that wants to kill me. if i don't show up everyday, chances are, it will. so i show up. i showed up that day and for the next four. by wednesday i was dry heaving my brains out. i lost 8lbs in 3 days and my hair is already beginning to thin. i am getting hard core cisplatin, the most intense chemo drug, and i am getting a lot of it. i am also getting this with massive amounts of radiation. one of my cancerous lymph nodes is in my paraarodic area of my stomach. my oncologist told me this is one of the toughest places to be radiated on. by friday i wanted to quit. i walked into my oncologist office crying hysterically, having a panic attack, (literally, they had to stop everything) and begging them to let me quit. i actually thought for a second, or a week, that i might rather die. after being talked to and cried along with my nurse, i gathered myself and went over to chemo and got some fluids. i sat in there with a bald woman, a sick man, and a couple people needing some quick shots before the weekend. i looked around and got some much needed perspective. we are not called survivors for nothing. we are actually cheating death. staring it in the face. it wants me to give up. it wants to take me from my family. but, that is not going to happen. so hell or not... "in the valley of the shadow of death, i will fear no evil". tomorrow i am showing up for my second round of chemo.