Two years ago I had 6 months straight chemotherapy. I don't remember everything they gave me, but I do remember Cisplatinum.

The doctor told me my case is a rare one though. The cancer I had (and still have, as it turns out to be incurable with current medical treatments) was identified as a mesothelioma of unknown primary origin. Even though it's not lymphoma, the cancer is only in my lymph nodes, without any indication of there being a primary tumor.

It's comparable to the type of cancer somebody gets at ages of 60+ after a life of working with asbestos, even though I can't remember ever even coming into contact with the stuff, AND I was only 25 years old when the cancer was discovered.

Intensive chemotherapy was the only option for me, as the cancer is too spread out for radiation therapy (or so I was told).

I was on a three week cycle. One full week of chemotherapy, two weeks to recover, and then start over again.

My experience?

The first day of therapy was nothing special. I didn't start feeling sick right away. By the second day I started feeling sick, but I could cope. By the third day, I was feeling completely miserable, and puking my guts out, even with an empty stomach there was the constant feeling of having to vomit. This resulted in a painful stomach on top of things. After the week of therapy, I needed about 3-4 days to regain my appetite, and to be able to actually keep down the food I was eating. In the time leading up to the next treatment, I felt ok, not great, provided that I had a good amount of sleep.

After the six months were over, I was a wreck physically. I had no strength left, and had lost considerable weight, due to hardly eating for an entire week every three weeks. My endurance and stamina were almost completely gone. I also required at least 12 hours of sleep a day the first 1-2 months.

Right now, I've regained some if not most of my strength, and am feeling quite healthy, as the cancer inside of me seems to have stabilized. Somebody who doesn't know about my condition can't tell I'm sick. The only thing I personally still notice is that I still require more and more regular sleep then before.

As of the end of my treatment, I'm getting a PET scan every 6 months to evaluate the evolution of the cancer, and I have to visit the hospital every 6 weeks to check up on my port catheter. These are only very minor inconveniences considering.

Some of the things in this post might not be easy to read if you're about to start therapy yourself, but there's no point in making it look better then it is. That being said, there's a huge number of different types of cancer, and everybody reacts differently to the treatment, so all or some of the above might not even apply to you.

If there's any advice I can give you, it's to stay positive, always. Even when you feel you can't handle it anymore and you think you're about to break, you should always have a positive attitude.

At some point during my treatment there were times when I assumed I wouldn't make it to the next year, but strangely enough, even then I never lost any sleep over it. Even coming the the realization that I might not live for much longer, I never gave up hope. I don't know if my positive attitude had any significance medically speaking (I'll leave that to people who are much smarter then me to figure out, or perhaps even philosophers), but it's an absolute fact that it made things much easier for me and the people around me. For me, it was easier coping with the cancer then it was coping with crying family members all around me.

Looking back at this post, man did I type up a huge wall of text. I hope it doesn't get lost and that my experience can help somebody.

Lastly, good luck to you DancesWithDownvotes, may your treatment be short and effective, and may you live a long and happy, cancer-free life.