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People tell you you're having chemotherapy, but there are different types of chemotherapy, and you don't know which one you're going to get and how it's going to affect you. The people in the hospitals don't always have time to help you understand it.

For most people, chemotherapy is no longer the chamber of horrors we often conceive it to be. Yes, it is an ordeal for some people, but it wasn't for me, nor for most of the patients I got to know during my four months of periodic visits to the chemo suite.

Chemotherapy isn't easy. I felt very fortunate I wouldn't have to go through that.

Chemotherapy takes its toll; the more you keep doing it, you lose your energy, and it gets more difficult to swallow.

I have acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive type of cancer. The typical prognosis is 3-6 months to live, but I would like to stress that is for a patient who is not receiving treatment.

Chemotherapy is brutal. The goal is pretty much to kill everything in your body without killing you.

The cancer I had is not at all equal to other people's cancer. I've never had to have chemotherapy; I haven't had to have a mastectomy.

Time is shortening. But every day that I challenge this cancer and survive is a victory for me.

Chemotherapy isn't good for you. So when you feel bad, as I am feeling now, you think, 'Well that is a good thing because it's supposed to be poison. If it's making the tumor feel this queasy, then I'm OK with it.'

Before I started chemotherapy treatments, I wrote down the best advice from doctors, family, friends, books, and survivors and created an 'Owner's Manual' to help me take care of myself. It would remind me that cancer is doable.