I returned to an email from the company’s chief scientific officer. Will approve tomorrow per oncologist request, his email said. The next day, I received multiple emails from company executives, authorizing milder chemo and apologizing.

Milder chemo came and went. My body felt like it was filled with cement after infusions; my eyes could not stay open; but the hairs on my head grew longer, and there were no more boils in my throat making it impossible to swallow or speak.

I went into remission that fall, and set myself to moving beyond cancer while also beginning to process the changes it had wrought on my body, and the nearness of my brush with death.

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