With the holidays approaching, the doctors wanted to wait until January to begin chemotherapy. This was very upsetting news and I begged them to let me start sooner. That probably sounds crazy to someone who has never gone through it, but the thought of having some wild runaway cancer cells in your body makes it hard to sleep at night. I felt like getting on chemotherapy would kill them all and I was impatient. I wanted them dead now. The doctors assured me that waiting a couple more weeks to start would not make a difference.

I stood on the street after a meeting with Doctor #1 waiting for the crosstown bus. A news reporter with a microphone interviewed people in line about their New Years resolutions. It would air later that night on the local news station. “The New Year is approaching, what is your New Year’s Resolution?” the reporter asked. All the normal responses were given.“I want to lose weight,” said a middle-aged heavy-set man. “I want to have more money,” said a young man a couple years out of college. “I want to exercise more,” responded a 35 year-old woman with a baby. “And how about you?” she asked me pointing the microphone in my direction. “I want to stay alive,” was all I could think of.

Mouths dropped around me when I answered. There was an uncomfortable silence like I had just said something dreadful. Awkwardly, the news reporter moved onto the next person in line. At that moment I realized how much I had always taken my life for granted. These people standing next to me didn’t even realize how lucky they were.

Strangely enough though, my biggest concern now was not over how sick the chemotherapy was going to make me. It wasn't over the possibility that the cancer might return once my treatment was over. What I agonized over the most was the fact that I was going to lose my hair. While a part of me realized that this was really the least of my worries, I couldn't stop thinking about how terrible I was going to look without hair.