When I began chemo five years ago, my oncologist told me that her goal was that I would get through treatment and say, "That wasn't as bad as I expected it to be." Chemotherapy is a systemic treatment meant to kill cancer cells, but it does not discriminate between cancer cells and other fast-growing cells, which is why it changes blood counts, disrupts hair and nail growth, and causes mouth sores. My chemo regimen began with four rounds of dose-dense Adriamycin (also known as the “red devil” because of its coloring) and Cytoxan, administered at two week intervals. The Cytoxan was infused by IV, but the vial of Adriamycin was shot directly into a vein. Each infusion lasted about two hours. Adriamycin causes hair loss within two or three weeks of the first dose. My oncologist cautioned that hair loss was imminent, and like clockwork, the first tufts came out in my hand the day before my second dose. It was the strangest thing—one day my hair felt like hair, the nex...