It's maddening. The good days and the bad days are just not predictable. We thought that Corinne was sick when the cancer was diagnosed, but that she would begin getting better as soon as the treatment started. Then, for months, the chemotherapy made her sicker than ever. With six treatments over four months, we thought we would learn to discern a pattern for the sick days. But even at the end of this siege, we were still being surprised.

The fact is that there were not a whole lot of days during the long first phase of treatment that Corinne had to retire to bed. But there were enough. And when the sick day came, she wasn't just weak and in pain, she was angry that it had happened again.