Chemotherapy doesn't just make you lose your hair. It makes you sick. Terribly sick at times. It seems that the whole point of chemotherapy is to poison the patient almost to death until the cancer can no longer survive.

There are great new (of course expensive) drugs that almost make the nausea of the bad old days a non-issue. But chemotherapy saps energy. It compromises the immune system to the point that most any exposure to groups of people is a danger. It creates exhausting anemia. Even with daily trips for the expensive shots, lots of days are spent in bed during the course of chemotherapy. And the shots, themselves, sometimes produce painful side effects.