Blog 4: The Chair Wasn’t the Hard Part. Going Home Was.

Before I Knew What Was Coming

When people hear the word “chemo,” I think they picture one hard day. One appointment, one infusion, one bad afternoon you push through and then go home to rest.

That’s not what it was for me.

Things moved fast once they knew. I was discharged from the hospital on July 26, 2023 — and barely two weeks later, on August 9th, I was sitting in an oncologist’s office hearing the word “stage 3” attached to my name for the first time. He laid out the treatment plan right there in that appointment. Told me I would need a port placed before we could start. Told me what was coming.

The port was placed on August 17th. The second and third days after that, I felt like I had gotten hit by a truck — my neck hurt so badly I didn’t know what to do with myself. But by that fourth day, I was fine. Like it had never happened. My body adjusted and moved on, the way bodies do when they don’t have a choice.

My first infusion was six days later, on August 23rd.

I didn’t know what to expect walking into that chair. And honestly? The first treatment wasn’t what I feared. I walked out thinking, okay — I can do this. This is manageable. I didn’t know yet that chemo accumulates. That it builds in your body, round after round, and what felt manageable the first time would feel like something else entirely by the fourth, the sixth, the eighth. I didn’t know the treatments would get harder the longer I went.

I had stage 3 colorectal cancer, and my treatment plan was FOLFOX — twelve rounds, one every two weeks, for six months straight. Chemo didn’t happen to me one day at a time. It took over my whole life in two-week loops, each one starting again before I’d fully recovered from the last.

By the time I felt like I could breathe — laugh without forcing it, eat something without my body fighting back, walk through the house without my legs feeling like they were dragging bricks — it was time to go back.

— ✦ —

The Pump Came Home with Me Too.

Here’s the part most people don’t know about FOLFOX: you don’t get to leave it at the cancer center.

After every infusion, I went home wearing a pump. For two full days, it sat there, slowly pushing chemo into my body through my port while I tried to live inside my own house like everything was normal.

Nothing about it was normal. That pump — which I named Faith — came everywhere with me: the kitchen, the bathroom, the couch, and my bed. I had to sleep carefully so I wouldn’t pull the tubing. I had to move carefully through my own home, dragging the thing that was making me sick around with me for two days at a time.

There’s a kind of lonely I don’t think I can fully explain to someone who hasn’t lived it — lying awake in the middle of the night, everyone else in the house asleep, feeling that pump still working. Still pushing. Still there. Trying to pray, trying not to panic, trying not to wonder what it was doing to the inside of my body. And doing all of that completely alone, because nobody else could feel what I was feeling.

— ✦ —

What Nobody Else Could Feel.

The fatigue wasn’t normal tired. It wasn’t “I need a nap” tired. It felt like my bones were tired. My blood was tired. My soul was tired. There were days I’d look at something that needed to be done and just stare at it, because my mind would say get up and my body simply wouldn’t listen.

I’d spent my whole life being the one who pushed through — the one who handled things, took care of people, figured it out. Chemo made me sit down. It made me ask for help. It made me admit I was weak, and it made me realize that saying “I’m okay” didn’t make it true.

There was nausea that came and went without warning, the kind that rearranged my whole day around what I could eat and how far I could be from a bathroom. Then there was the cold. Cold stopped being just cold — it started to hurt. A sip of water could make my throat feel like it was closing or like I was swallowing shards of glass, needles, or razor blades.

Reaching into the refrigerator could make my fingers burn and tingle. Cold air on my face felt like an attack. Wanting a cold glass of water became something I had to plan around.

And if I cried — even my tears hurt. My eyes would burn, and the tears would sting on the way down. So, in the moments I finally let myself break, the crying itself became one more thing chemo took from me.

My hands and feet tingled with neuropathy, some days so badly my fingers didn’t feel like they belonged to me. I had no idea which parts of that would fade and which would stay. Food stopped tasting like food. There were days I’d look at a plate and want to cry — not because I wasn’t hungry, but because I knew my body needed the strength, and I just didn’t have it in me to chew, to swallow, to try.

— ✦ —

What My Daughter Saw.

People saw the version of me after I’d pulled myself together — the smile, the “I’m hanging in there” text, the version I curated because I didn’t want anyone worrying.

What they didn’t see was the woman lying next to the pump, afraid to move wrong in her sleep. Afraid of cold water. Standing in the kitchen trying to figure out what her body might tolerate that day. Crying, and then hurting because the crying itself burned.

As a mother, that part hit different. I didn’t just feel sick — I felt guilty for being sick. I wanted my daughter to see me the way I used to be present, energetic, doing all the things moms do. I wanted to protect her from the scary parts.

But cancer doesn’t always let you hide. Some days she saw me tired. Some days she saw me weak. Some days she saw a version of me I never wanted to live in her memory. There’s a particular kind of heartbreak in being a sick mother — fighting for your life while trying to protect your child’s heart at the same time. Trying to be honest without scaring her. Trying to make your voice sound normal when nothing about your life is normal anymore.

My husband watched all of it too — watched me go from the woman who handled everything to a woman who could barely get through a day. Chemo doesn’t just happen to the patient. It moves into the whole house. It changes the schedule, the dinner table, the way people look at you when they’re trying not to look worried. And that look — the one on the faces of the people who love you — sometimes hurt almost as much as the chemo did.

— ✦ —

“Lord, Help Me Get Through Today.”

There were days I sat in that chair and thought, I cannot do this again. Not because I’d given up, and not because I’d lost faith. I was just tired — tired of being brave, tired of being poked and hooked up and disconnected and reconnected, tired of feeling like a battlefield, tired of saying I was okay when I wasn’t.

I wanted healing. I just didn’t want to keep being broken to get there. That’s such a hard place to live — knowing the thing making you sick might also be the thing saving you. Sitting in a chair and letting poison run through your body because you’re praying it kills whatever’s trying to kill you first. Carrying that poison home. Sleeping beside it. Watching your family watch you.

On the worst days, I stopped praying for the whole treatment plan, or the next round, or the next scan. I just asked God for that day. Lord, help me get through today. And He did — not always loudly, not always by taking the pain away. Sometimes it looked like enough strength to sit up. Enough to drink something warm. Enough to answer my daughter. Enough to close my eyes and sleep through part of it.

Looking back now, I don’t just see twelve rounds of treatment. I see a woman who was terrified and still showed up. A mother who wanted more time. A wife who wanted to come home. A body breaking down while something underneath it kept refusing to quit.

Chemo took my energy, my appetite, my comfort, and days I’ll never get back. But it never touched the reason I kept going back.

I wanted to live. I wanted to see my kids grow up. I wanted more birthdays, more ordinary days, more “Mommy” moments. I wanted to come home — really home, not just home with a pump attached to me.

So, every two weeks, I went back to that chair. Scared. Tired. Already knowing exactly what was coming.

And I sat down anyway.

—Von Unfiltered

Stage 3 (2023) · Remission (2024) ·  Stage 4 (2025) · Remission (2026)