It’s Sunday, Dec. 8, 2019, and the fog is finally lifting.

On Monday, I completed my second round of chemo: four treatments in total. It doesn’t sound like much, but sometimes I am fatigued by the breadth of it all. The days that follow, I am generally burdened by an invasive discomfort that is only removed with the passing of time. It’s a pervasive sickness that alters me both physically and emotionally.

Within the first five to six days, my nausea peaks, my voice is strained and my body is weak. Sleep becomes but a mere concept and my mind begins to play tricks on me. An aberrant taste of infection coats my palate. And I move about lethargically under the dismal cloud of illness. During this time, I tread through the murky layers of what I now call the chemo fog, counting down the days like the seconds before a New Year.

Each day that passes becomes more bearable, but the side effects resurface every time I go back in for my booster shots.

Demonstrating textbook Pavlovian conditioning, I have a physical reaction as soon as I step inside my doctor’s office. An associative response to an otherwise neutral stimuli, I feel ill before a nurse even calls my name. It’s the smell, I think, that really triggers me. Much like Pavlov’s dog, who would associate the metronome with food and begin to salivate; I associate the scent of that waiting room with malaise, and I instantly feel nauseated. It’s like someone is constantly heating up and eating something marinated in cow pie. I hate it.

Years ago, while working at the Marriott in Newport Coast, I opened a tuna packet in our sales room, and my coworker, Livia Sappington, ripped me a new one. I’ll never forget her wrath. But now I know her fury.

Relief settles in only after I leave, which I have found is a common sentiment shared by many.

Like the woman who came out of a separate door and joined me while I waited for the elevator.

“Going down is always better than going up,” she said to me. “Ah, yes,” I smiled, realizing just how true that really was.

“I’ve been coming here for my infusions for 20 years,” she said. My mouth agape, I managed to only muster my trademark response, “Oh boy.”

The doors opened, we entered and headed down. On the second floor another woman stepped in.

“Going down?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Yes, get me out of here!” she replied, sort of tongue in cheek. “I’ve been coming here twice a year since being diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer 13 years ago.”

“Oh my! She’s been coming here for 20 years.” I enthusiastically volunteered. Recognizing it was probably not my place to say anything, I offered up nothing else and simply watched these two ladies exchanged pleasantries.

To me, it’s still unreal that I am part of this group of people. Almost like a club of champions, battling a shared enemy. And their weapon, a willingness to persevere.

Since the diagnosis, I have received a ton of advice. One I am often met with is, “Be strong.” But for a while when I would hear these words of encouragement, my mind would immediately unearth images of physical strength. Like the time I witnessed BJ’s best friend, Jared, carry two, 24-bottled cases of water from the store to his car.

I was pulling into a Publix parking spot, while Jared was walking out. I called out his name expecting only a verbal exchange from afar. His car, after all, was parked in the opposite direction of mine. But deviating from his route, he turned and proceeded to walk toward me. I don’t recall what we discussed. All I remember is how he practically curled those cases like two, 5-pound dumbbells.

Even when I played soccer, took weight training classes and went to the gym at night, I was never strong enough to casually tote cases of water around like Popeye.

But physical strength, while also important during this process, is not nearly as imperative as the mental stamina needed to get through it.

And when I think of strength in this way, I am flooded with images of my mom. Her life’s experiences have tested her resolve, and yet she’s managed to seep deeper into an irrepressible river of resiliency. She’s 5 feet tall, but Herculean in spirit.

She’s the type of mom who, while also sick, takes care of both of my children, so I’m not exposed to germs. The type of mom who wakes up at 6 a.m. the day of my chemo to make me soup and take me to treatment. The type of mom who came into my room every night for two weeks after I had Julian, so I could sleep. Her determination and exemplary parenting was something I felt I could never emulate. But I suppose until you’re forced to deal with your own circumstances, you just don’t know what strength lies beneath. Especially, when your motivation is your children.

And now I see that level of determination all around me: the women in the elevator, my chemo buddies like Maura and Carol, and even newcomer, Gary, who I met on Monday and told me he has Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma all throughout his body.

So whether it’s during the chemo fog or after it’s been lifted, that philosophy of strength, that steadfast drive to survive, is what I have to keep at the forefront of my mind, will and heart. Every. Single. Day.

Developments — The latest and greatest on what’s been going on: 

• Keanu got over his croup, but then BJ was sick. The boys and I stayed with my parents, but I started getting some sniffles, so my oncologist put me on a Z-Pak. Fortunately, I did not get worse, but the boys weren’t so lucky, and they both got a cold. My mom had them for the better part of the week, and now she’s sick, too. 😦
• Baby K came back home yesterday, and hopefully, Julian will come home tomorrow.
• I have been losing a lot hair … Nothing worth complaining about, at all, but I really didn’t like seeing it everywhere. So I decided to cut it short.
• My pulmonary test came back normal, thank God
• Keanu turned 11 months yesterday. Time is flying by!
• And this week, I have a PET scan scheduled to see how the chemo is affecting the cancer in my body.

As always, thank you all from the bottom of my heart for the ongoing support and prayers.