Life in Chemo: A Totally Incomplete Guide

Welcome to my totally incomplete guide to life in chemotherapy. Chemo is awful. Truly. Some drugs will have more intense side effects than others, but, it’s not going to be gentle or comfortable. I hope this guide can help lessen some of the burden during your journey.

I had 18 months of chemo to treat (and cure!) triple positive breast cancer. So I had hardcore, movie of the week chemo, major surgery, and “gentle” chemo. My team was amazing at getting me through it all and managing the health side effects.

What I didn’t have was helpful guidance on dealing with all the non-medical side effects: getting acne for the first time at 45; learning how to draw on eyebrows; trying to make smoothies; drinking water when it tastes like a dumpster fire of melted aluminum spoons. Your chemo might have different side-effects; you might get to skip some treatment steps; you might have different steps.

This guide is a summary of everything that I’ve learned, as well as the process that I used to learn it. I spent a lot of hours researching solutions to issues after they had become really entrenched problems. I hope the guide can provide you useful information or help spark your own ideas.

Click on any of the tiles or the menu for articles on self care, beauty, hacks to make going through chemo, hopefully, just a bit easier.