My mom and husband accompanied me to my first ever oncology appointment. I still couldn’t believe I just registered to be a cancer patient. After check-in I sat down and studied each patient waiting with me, taking note that no one seemed to look my age. I was looking for someone like me, someone I could make eye contact and smile at, like we’re in this together. But the waiting room had a half dozen or so grandmas and grandpas, casually watching TV or messing with their canes. I made an assumption they were in pure acceptance they were cancer patients. Their time wasn’t cut short like potentially mine was….

Near the end of my treatment my mom and I were driving down to Mayo Clinic for yet another appointment. Most times we talked, but usually we would spend the drive arguing about Covid lockdowns and the double standards I was starting to see in the medical community. I was fired up about it, quickly triggered because I felt the medical community had almost duped me with their fear tactics, too…

I would visualize the drugs entering my body and like hound dogs, sniffing out the bad cells, and then kung fu style slicing them in half with a samari sword…

I scanned crowds to search for other women in my shoes, someone wearing a scarf like me, or had short hair obvious from chemo regrowth, and I’d daydream of what I would do if I did. Would I hug them? Would I just give them knowing smile? Or was that like asking a big bellied woman how pregnant she was, only to find out she wasn’t? I never once saw anyone so I’ll never know…

Almost being done with chemo is a strange thing because you want to believe your body has been rid of disease but you are sicker than ever. Walking around with a head scarf and diminishing eyebrows and lashes feels vulnerable. I was in a constant state of awareness of my predicament, I was practically wearing what I was going through for everyone to see…

Those next few days I found myself so grateful for the hair I had. All those mornings I took for granted having to shower, blow dry and curl my hair into beach waves, day in and day out, now seemed more like a gift. Knowing very soon I wouldn’t have any hair I would stare into he mirror and admire my eyebrows, unbalanced with the outer ends cut short from two different childhood accidents. And take in my straight, average eyelashes that seemed so perfect now…

We were at Mayo Clinic for another appointment. We rode up the elevator in silence with what looked like a close-knit Italian family. The family stood in a circle around the older woman sitting in a wheel chair, presumably the matriarch of the family, like they were protecting her from the test results they were expecting to get that day…

A few years before the nightmare started, I was standing at the kitchen island shoveling rejected food from my kids plates into the garbage. Sometimes there would be salvageable scraps, like a slightly bruised strawberry slice or carrot stick I’d rescue from the landfill and eat. I was a scrap eater, that was my diet…

It was spring in Minnesota and the time where everyone would emerge from their homes, socially starved. I was getting out of the car when I noticed a neighbor friend walking my way. The first few days after a chemo treatment I couldn’t stand for very long before I’d get a wave of nausea and would black out. I obliged to her social invitation and we politely interacted in the driveway as I answered all her questions: “How are you feeling? Anything we can do? How many treatments do you have left?” I craved to be understood on a deep level but there was never enough time to deep dive into the raw and real feelings I would experience alone…