The Call After My First Chemotherapy

I was recovering from one of the most intense medical interventions of my life.

Maybe the most intense, full stop.

Four days in bed.

Numbing myself.

Not wanting to feel the pain—or the reality of what my body was going through.

It’s still hard to imagine this procedure.

Bringing poison into the body.

So strong it can destroy cancer cells.

And everything else it touches along the way.

When I was first diagnosed, I had Stage 2A—or “favorable.”

Meaning the cancer hadn’t spread below my diaphragm.

The plan was three rounds of ABVD chemotherapy and one month of radiation. Hard, but okay, there was an end in sight.

And then came the call.

The doctor’s voice was steady, clinical.

They had revised my scans.

They weren’t sure about a tumor under my chest. And because they weren’t sure, they had to take “the comfortable decision”—to assume it was cancer.

That meant doubling my chemotherapy.

And skipping the radiation.

My world turned upside down.

WTF?

How can I possibly have so much of this in my body?

Ten months of therapy?

I won’t be able to do this.

It was a difficult call to take.

And yet…what could I do?

💛 If you’re in the middle of your own “call,” share your story below—or simply let this be your reminder: you don’t have to walk this path alone.