Round 4: The infusion facility.

I am generally the first one there.

Sometimes, I arrive before the reception staff have had time to boot up their computers. The wait can be a bit long, since the nurses are still en route to work and the infusion facility is completely void of any human activity. So I sip on iced tea and rub my port with numbing cream while I wait. To my left, my husband works remotely on his laptop, while to my right, my older sister pages through expired magazines that one only finds in doctor's offices.

I am finally summoned to the infusion facility, and they draw blood from my port. The numbing cream luckily helps to reduce any painful side effects of being stabbed with a needle. But, I mean, a stabbing is still a stabbing. Even though I am given advanced warning, the action startles me every time. The necessary blood is extracted but the needle stays in the port, attached to a tube that is taped to my skin. I should be used to it all by now. But, I'm not. I don't think I will ever be used to this silicone port in my chest.

After moving my stuff - laptop, snacks, etc. - to my private room, I then wait some more, this time for the requisite meeting with my oncologist. Before I see him, I'm weighed and cuffed and there is mention that my heart rate is high. It always is. Then my oncologist reviews the results of the blood draws and, thanks to the steroids I remembered to take twice the day before and once again at breakfast that morning, it is revealed that my white count, like my heart rate, is also high. Though, unlike my heart rate, my high white blood count is considered a good thing.

We go over any questions and schedule follow-up visits, and then I am sent to my room within the infusion facility to begin my treatment. I sit in a cushioned, heated chair covered with blankets, wearing a colorful scarf atop my head, a face full of makeup, and fuzzy socks on my feet. As I am given my premeds (including some heavy-duty antinausea meds) and the immunotherapy drugs, I pass the time by binge-watching Friends on my laptop via Netflix - with each episode, I chuckle at the outdated humor and the absurdity of plot devices, but also at the memories of watching these very episodes first on "live" TV and then again through a DVD marathon.

My, these times they are a-changin.

When the afternoon approaches and the chemo is due to make its entrance, I drink electrolytes and snack on pretzels as I wait for my lunch (Chinese, of course) to arrive. All in all, the entire process from start to finish is between five to six hours. But, I don't mind so much anymore. I am flanked by two of the most important people in my life: my husband on my left and my older sister on my right. I am relaxed and comfortable and maybe a little drowsy.

Until I have to go to the bathroom. Then, I am reminded that I am attached to IV tubes through a silicon port that was surgically placed in my body. And that these very tubes chain me to the long metal rod on wheels that hold the poisons and chemicals pumping greedily into my body. When I stand, I must depend on someone to help push the heavy contraption, which beeps incessantly, to the bathroom with me. This means I can never go to the bathroom alone. It is an unavoidable feeling of helplessness and degradation. But when nature calls, I guess one must answer it no matter how difficult the situation. So I put down my food and pause my laptop. Opening the door, I witness a stark contrast to the comfort of my room. Whereas inside there are loved ones and comedy TV and Chinese food, out here it is silent and still as a graveyard.

There are two private rooms on either end of the infusion facility: I occupy one, but the other seems like it is always empty. Instead, the room is crowded with patients who are much, much older than I could ever dream to be, each in the communal space separated only by a curtain. They sit in cushioned chairs like mine, but very few use any of the blankets. No one eats, even though it's lunch time. The women being treated are usually alone, wearing scarves or wigs on their heads, and the men are usually accompanied by a woman, whom I can only assume are their wives, knitting quietly beside them. Some of my fellow patients sleep, some read paperback books.

I acknowledge them all as I walk by them on my way to the bathroom. The ones who are asleep ignore me completely, and the ones who are awake stare at me but many do not reciprocate either. They just want to be left alone, it seems, which is fine and totally understandable. I must look so strange to them, this rosy-cheeked girl with a smile on her face and a skip in her step. But, like everyone else in the room, I too am playing a game of chess with Death. Some of us will win, and some of us won't be so fortunate.

Only time will tell.

I pass the nurses at their station, cheerfully greeting each by name, and they return my sentiment in kind. Always smiling, always offering me sweets and snacks, always inquiring after my health, always glad to see my sunshiney disposition. But I remember how it was when I first met them during my tour of the facility. The shock was palpable. Their smiles, which never reached their eyes, were strained and uneasy. They didn't know where to look. They asked me to repeat my date of birth because they couldn't process that one of their patients was born in December 1984. One nurse commented, "You are the youngest person I have ever seen walk through this door." And I believe her.

As in the infusion facility, the waiting room of the oncology office is also full of people much older than I am. Here, they regard me unabashedly, and I let them. Because it's not just blatant stares and looks of pity. No, I also see something else: fear. They look at my youth and suddenly think of younger sisters, nieces, daughters, granddaughters. Because, to them, I am living proof that cancer is merciless. But, hopefully - as a rosy-cheeked girl with a smile on my face and a skip in my step, as I successfully complete each round of chemo and eagerly await the end of this journey - I can also prove that cancer is fallible.

And it will rue the day it ever thought it could destroy me.