My experience with chemotherapy and its side effects

My experience during chemotherapy—well, when I started it was actually better than I expected it to be. It wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. It wasn’t the greatest thing in the world, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. Because of the information I’d been reading on the Internet, I was kind of scared. But after my first treatment I was like, okay, I don’t feel that great but I don’t feel like I’m completely dying. But then my experience could be different than someone else’s because I didn’t—I wasn’t hospitalized ever.

I did four months of chemo and four rounds of Adriomyacin and cytoxil, and four rounds of Taxol. Both of them had their pros and their cons. The first set of what’s called AC, the Adriomyacin and Cytoxan(?)—it made me feel nauseous, it gave me bumps in my mouth, took my hair out. Which was probably the hardest part out of everything, was losing the hair. When my surgeon and I had talked about just cancer in general—well, breast cancer—he said, you know, this disease is 10% physical, 90% emotional. And through that process, that’s something that I thought about. It was more about how I was feeling about myself because I did gain like 20 points on it. Lost my hair, you know, which is a big thing. Yeah, it was hard. And then the second half—I wasn’t as nauseous with the Taxol but my bones ached more. It’s like the younger you are, the harder it is on your bones. Along with some of the drugs that they give you to keep your levels up—your blood cell, your white count up. So it was like a double-whammy. I felt like someone who had severe arthritis some days, like right afterwards. And I think the hardest thing is, right after treatment you don’t feel well at all. But then by the time you start feeling well, it’s time to go back in for another treatment.