Summary

At Chemo School – The author attends a meeting for people about to start chemotherapy treatment, intended to define the do’s and don’t’s of getting through chemo – what to do, how to behave. She takes notes for her friend Tita, a fellow writer obsessive about details, and comments that at the end of class, she feels ready to tackle what is coming.

In the Chemo Bay – The author describes the atmosphere in what she calls “the chemo bay,” the room in which she and others go through the process of taking in “the poisonous stuff that we hope will make us better” (23).

Suspicious Country – After her diagnosis, the author has difficulty focusing her attention long enough to read, but manages to return to the essays of French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, whose work, she says, helped her mother through...