THON alumnus Jeremy Rupp watched his mother go through chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer.  Read on to find out what it was like for him to watch someone he loved go through chemotherapy and the lessons that he learned from it.

Participating in THON has always given me admiration for just how strong the kids are. All that they go through with the attitude they have is just truly astonishing.  Just how astonishing they are has not become quite clear to me until recently.  Chemotherapy is pretty much synonymous with cancer. We all hear of the treatment, chemotherapy, and see it as a negative thing. We know it is a poison and think about a top level of its side effects. For the most part, we only associate it with nausea and hair loss. And until chemo played a roll in my family, I never really knew the full extent of the drug. I never really knew how much of a toll it took on a person in every single way. I never knew just how strong the kids actually are.

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of my senior year in college, right after I took my last final. Cancer sucks, but she was lucky; she was truly blessed by God. The cancer was aggressive and next to her lymph nodes. However, it never spread to the lymph nodes or surrounding muscle, and the cancer was removed from the surgery. After surgery, my family was of course on cloud nine hearing that she was cancer free. The doctors explained that the next step is to prevent a relapse. This meant chemo.

I’ve seen the Four Diamonds Movie, I’ve seen Bucket List, I’ve watched the THON videos and heard the family stories, but nothing truly emphasizes the effects of chemo. Chemo usually happens in cycles - oftentimes in three-week cycles between each session, 4 to 6 cycles, 18 weeks total.  When you go in for chemo, you sit hooked up to the drug and some sort of steroid to counteract the initial nausea. There are other ways to take chemo, but side effects are the same. Most media portray chemo ending there –with only hair loss to come…the reality is that it is just a small part of it. Five to seven days after it goes into your system, the side effects are the worst. You hair doesn’t just fall out, but your scalp burns and itches. The nerves in your hands twitch so that your fingers stiffen and hurt. The chemicals burn both your skin and insides as it goes through your body. You don’t just feel weak and tired, but “chemically weak and tired”, in a way that patients whom are going through chemotherapy say can’t be described unless you go through it. While you are tired, you are constantly uncomfortable so you can’t sleep and your skin seeps chemicals, leaving you feeling disgusted.  Your tongue changes color, your face breaks out, which makes it hard to eat… and of course the nausea doesn’t help.

After seven days you recover a little bit and regain some strength, but not full strength. 12-14 days after treatment, white blood cells are at an all time low—which puts you at a risk for more sickness. Seven more days and you are right back to another cycle, another session of chemo. Only this time, you aren’t completely healthy to begin with.

As cycles go on - the side effects grow. Everything becomes emphasized. Not only that, but the steroids that are meant to help prevent the nausea start to tear up the inside of your stomach. Your fingers stiffen more from nerves. You continue to become more tired, more weak, and more “chemically weak” during the in between times. Everything just intensifies. Think of it as working out. The first set makes you really sore to begin with - and the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth sets you are expected to keep the same weight, same rest time, and same reps.  

Now, imagine the emotional toll feeling like this physically for 12 – 18 weeks. 18 weeks of feeling absolutely horrible. 18 weeks trying to remember what it felt like to be healthy, wondering if you will get healthy, wondering if this will even work, if you will have to do it again? Imagine more than a semester’s worth of time feeling like that.

Adults do have more intense sessions than children and the elderly, because their bodies are physically more developed. Yet, the oncologists told me the side effects are proportionally equal to the children. My mom is one of the strongest people I know, she is keeping positive through this because she understands it. She knows it is about preventing a relapse for her – not to cure her. This is for breast cancer. Now, cancer is cancer, I am not going to say one is better than the other. But breast cancer has an easier surgical fix, so statistically chemo is done more for relapse rather than cure…

Children don’t have an easy surgical fix for cancer. Nor do they always completely understand what is going on. Their friends don’t understand it either and see them as contaminated.  So, again, think of a semester’s worth of feeling like that and your friends are pulling away from you:  it would be an absolute emotional toll on me, on the majority of us. Yet these kids still smile. They are an inspiration.  Being involved in THON, playing with the kids, seeing the kids in the THON videos, reading the stories – all of these things have one common factor. These kids are literally the most courageous and strongest people I know. Their outlook on all this is just…awe-inspiring. They do truly live. Most pity children who are diagnosed with cancer.  Don’t. Admire them. They are truly astonishing. If they can go through 18 weeks of chemo, through sickness and in pain, sometimes multiple times in their life, without understanding and with a smile on their face then we can go through a few stressful weeks at a time, a boring job that we chose to do and get paid for, a few late night meetings with people who become family, and 46 hours of standing with friends, with family, and with the amazing kids. 


FTK Forever,

Jeremy