Chemotherapy is a liar and a thief. It lies, because it makes us feel impossibly sick–so sick we cannot possibly recover. It steals, because it causes most of us to lose the physical characteristics we associate with personal identity: our hair, eyelashes, nose hairs (trust me, you’ll miss them more than you might think), facial shape, and sometimes fingernails and skin. (You don’t lose *all* your skin, of course, but it becomes a crackly, dried-out thing you might not recognize.) This was me at the start of my cancer journey: This is me today:
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