I was diagnosed at 21 with stage IIB Hodgkin's over 30 years ago & endured chemo & radiation. Chemo & I just do not get along! My family internist introduced me in the hospital to one of the best Oncologists in the country, affiliated with Mount Sinai in NY. I see him once a year & we joke about how young we were then. I met my husband when I started treatments, & I'm sure that one of the reasons he continued to date a very sick girl like me was because his brother was in remission from Hodgkin's. My treatments had to stop twice due to a very low blood count & the onset of Shingles - boy, was that nasty! The pain was unbelievable & it left me with a huge scar behind my left shoulder. From time to time, I still feel a jolt of pain & intense itching there. In 1978, 4 months before my wedding, I had to have emergency surgery due to abdominal adhesions. Around 13 or 14 years ago, my Oncologist told me that more & more women who had been irradiated in the chest for Hodgkin's around 20 years prior, were being diagnosed with Breast Cancer - so I was to make sure I went for my mammograms & to a breast surgeon every year. Somehow, I just knew I was going to be one of them. Sure enough, that's just what happened in 1995. I had a partial mastectomy & reconstruction, & of course, chemo. Despite my doctor telling me it would be nowhere near as bad as what I got for the Hodgkin's, I was throwing up constantly. But I survived this, as well. Many people in the building I grew up in came down with some form of cancer, including my mother (Bladder) & grandmother (breast). My mom had to have a urostomy, but lives in Las Vegas with my 87-year-old dad & my 55-year-old sister, who is developmentally disabled. It so happens, my dad is now being treated for Bladder Cancer! I, like many, could not escape the many after effects of chemo & radiation: severe reflux, asthma, neuropathy, infertility. I am an optimist by nature, but battle depression on & off, as does my husband, who has his own health problems due to a car accident 6 1/2 years ago. I am not as good a "nurse" as he is, though, I guess because I had first gotten sick so young, & was so used to being taken care of for the longest time. We hang in there, though, & that's the advice I have for anyone first going through a bad illness. Just tell yourself "There are people worse off than I am," because it is always true.