That was me at Mayo Clinic.

By the time I arrived there, I was not simply a newly diagnosed cancer patient looking for treatment. I was a cancer patient carrying medical trauma, a recently removed port, a new PICC line, a body recovering from sepsis, and enough distrust to fill an entire hospital wing.

Tallahassee Memorial Hospital had already become the setting of some of the darkest days of my life.

I had gone there expecting chemotherapy.

Instead, my infected port had to be surgically removed. I developed sepsis. I was trapped in a revolving door of morphine and Dilaudid while nurses struggled to understand me—and, at times, seemed to struggle to understand one another. Joe watched me begin to disappear inside myself and finally stepped in to stop the opioid rotation before I disappeared completely.

Then came the chemotherapy problem.

TMH had some methotrexate.

Just not enough for me.

There is something uniquely horrifying about having an aggressive, metastatic cancer and being told that the hospital has the drug you need—but not enough of it to treat you.

It is difficult to explain what that does to a person.

You spend your whole life believing hospitals have systems. Plans. Backup plans. Pharmacy inventories. People whose job it is to make sure the medication required to keep you alive is actually available.

Then one day you are lying in a hospital bed and discover that the system is being held together with tape, prayer, and somebody’s best guess.

I missed my third and fourth scheduled doses of high-dose methotrexate.

Cancer, meanwhile, did not miss an appointment.

It did not care about supply chains, staffing problems, hospital politics, or which institution was responsible for ordering what. Cancer was not sitting politely in the waiting room while everyone figured it out.

It was inside my body.

So when I arrived at Mayo, I wanted one thing:

I wanted them to take over.

I wanted them to give me my chemotherapy there.

I wanted to believe that if I could get far enough away from TMH, I could finally feel safe again.

I begged.

I explained what had happened. I explained the port infection, the surgery, the sepsis, the medication nightmare, and the missing methotrexate. I explained that I no longer trusted the hospital responsible for continuing my treatment.

I was not being dramatic.

I was not being difficult.

I was terrified.

There is a difference.

Patients are often labeled “difficult” when fear makes them ask too many questions, challenge a decision, or refuse to smile sweetly while their lives are being managed by strangers.

Apparently, nearly dying can make a woman a little particular about where she receives chemotherapy.

Who knew?

I believed Mayo would understand. Surely a place with Mayo Clinic written on the building would hear my story and say, “Of course. We will treat you here.”

That is not what happened.

Dr. Attia believed I should receive my chemotherapy at TMH.

I argued.

I pleaded.

I tried to explain that returning there did not feel like a routine transfer of care. It felt like being ordered back to the scene of an accident while the wreckage was still smoking.

I did not want to go.

Dr. Attia won.

In May 2023, I returned to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital to receive chemotherapy.

I wish I could say I walked through those doors feeling strong and victorious.

I did not.

I walked in angry.

I walked in frightened.

I walked in watching everything.

Every medication.

Every bag.

Every tube.

Every person who entered the room.

Before cancer, I trusted medical professionals almost automatically. After TMH, trust had become something that had to be earned one action at a time.

That is one of the things people do not always understand about medical trauma. The emergency may end, but your nervous system does not receive the memo.

Your body remembers.

The smell of antiseptic.

The beeping monitors.

The rolling medication cart.

The hiss of the blood-pressure cuff.

The sound of shoes approaching your room in the middle of the night.

Things that once seemed ordinary begin to feel like warnings.

Returning to TMH for chemotherapy meant placing my life back into the hands of people and a system I no longer trusted.

But I needed treatment.

That was the trap.

Cancer patients are often told to advocate for ourselves. Ask questions. Speak up. Demand answers. Get a second opinion.

What nobody tells you is that advocacy can come with a price.

After everything that happened—and after I objected loudly enough to make it clear I was not going to quietly accept whatever came next—I felt the change.

I was treated differently.

It was not necessarily one dramatic moment that I could point to and place neatly in a complaint.

It was a collection of things.

A shift in tone.

Less warmth.

A different energy when someone walked into the room.

The feeling that I was no longer simply a patient.

I was the patient who had complained.

The patient who had questioned them.

The patient who had gone to Mayo.

The patient who did not trust them.

And, to be fair, I didn’t.

Trust is not restored because someone puts on a badge, walks into your room, and tells you everything will be fine.

Trust is restored through honesty, consistency, competence, and accountability.

Preferably before the patient develops sepsis.

Still, there I was.

Back in the chair.

Back beneath the fluorescent lights.

Back with poison hanging from an IV pole, about to enter my body through a PICC line because the port that was supposed to deliver my treatment had instead delivered bacteria into my bloodstream.

Cancer is full of contradictions.

You are poisoned to stay alive.

You surrender control in order to fight for control.

You return to places that traumatized you because they possess the medicine you need.

You learn to fear treatment and fear missing treatment at the exact same time.

By May, I was exhausted in a way sleep could not fix.

My body was tired.

My mind was tired.

My soul was tired.

But beneath all that exhaustion was something stubborn.

I was still here.

Still asking questions.

Still paying attention.

Still refusing to disappear.

That may not sound heroic, and honestly, it did not feel heroic.

It felt like survival.

Survival is rarely cinematic.

There is no dramatic soundtrack.

No slow-motion shot of the patient staring bravely into the distance.

Sometimes survival is a frightened woman sitting in a chemotherapy chair, furious that she has been forced to return, checking the label on every bag before allowing anyone to connect it to her body.

Sometimes survival is saying, “Tell me what that is,” one more time.

Sometimes it is letting the treatment begin even when every cell in your body is screaming for you to run.

I did not return to TMH because I forgave what happened.

I returned because I had metastatic osteosarcoma, and cancer had already stolen too much time.

I needed chemotherapy.

So I sat there.

Unhappy.

Suspicious.

Angry.

Alive.

And the medicine finally began to flow.

I had won one battle: I was finally receiving treatment.

But I had learned something I could never unlearn.

The place trying to save your life can also endanger it.

The people caring for you can also fail you.

And sometimes the patient must remain awake, informed, and vigilant even while fighting a disease that has already taken nearly everything out of her.

I was no longer the woman who had entered the cancer system believing everyone knew what they were doing.

That woman was gone.

In her place was someone sharper.

Less trusting.

More watchful.

And considerably less worried about whether anyone thought she was difficult.

Cancer had already changed my body.

TMH changed the way I moved through medicine.

From that point forward, I would never again confuse compliance with cooperation.

I would listen.

I would ask.

I would challenge.

And when necessary, I would raise hell.

Politely, of course.

At least at first.

Then Tallahassee Memorial Hospital became the place where I wondered if I’d survive long enough to receive it.

I wish I could tell you that once treatment started, everything fell into place.

It didn’t.

Instead, it felt like every time we climbed one mountain, another one appeared right behind it.

Not long after beginning chemotherapy, my Port-a-Cath became infected.

At first it didn’t seem like much.

A little redness.

Some tenderness.

The kind of thing you convince yourself is probably normal because, by then, nothing about cancer felt normal anymore.

Then my body started waving bigger red flags.

Fever.

Chills.

Pain.

Weakness.

The kind of exhaustion that reaches into your bones and tells you not to bother getting out of bed.

I didn’t know it then, but bacteria had found their way into the very device that was supposed to deliver the medicine that might save my life.

The infection had become sepsis.

One word.

Six letters.

Absolutely terrifying.

Within hours I wasn’t home anymore.

I was in a hospital bed with alarms constantly beeping, IV pumps talking louder than people, blood cultures being drawn around the clock, and doctors wearing expressions that told me more than their words ever could.

I wasn’t just fighting cancer anymore.

Now I was fighting an infection that was trying to kill me before the cancer had the chance.

As if that wasn’t enough…

The chemotherapy schedule I’d been clinging to began falling apart.

I was supposed to receive my third and fourth rounds of high-dose methotrexate.

Instead, I learned something I never imagined I’d hear in the United States of America.

The hospital had methotrexate…

Just not enough for me.

Imagine wrapping every ounce of hope around a treatment plan.

Imagine counting down the days.

Then imagine someone telling you the medicine exists—but you can’t have it.

Not because your doctor changed the plan.

Not because your body couldn’t tolerate it.

Because there wasn’t enough.

I remember thinking…

How is this possible?

I have metastatic cancer.

I’m trying to stay alive.

And we’re rationing chemotherapy?

Every day that treatment was delayed felt like cancer was quietly gaining ground while I sat helplessly watching from a hospital bed.

Cancer teaches you many things.

One of them is that waiting can be more painful than treatment itself.

Then came another decision.

The infection had taken over my Port-a-Cath.

It had to come out.

I remember being wheeled into surgery thinking…

This port had only one job.

Instead, it became another scar.

Another reminder that absolutely nothing about this journey was going according to plan.

After surgery, I expected things to get better.

Instead…

The days blurred together.

Day became night.

Night became day.

The windows didn’t matter anymore.

Time didn’t matter anymore.

Everything smelled like antiseptic.

Everything sounded like monitors.

I don’t remember much television.

I don’t remember many conversations.

I mostly remember feeling trapped.

Not just inside the hospital.

Inside my own body.

Pain became another full-time roommate.

To manage it, I was receiving morphine and Dilaudid around the clock, alternating every four hours.

I trusted the people caring for me.

Why wouldn’t I?

But somewhere along the way, something changed.

I wasn’t sleeping.

I was disappearing.

Joe noticed it before I did.

He watched the woman he loved slowly fade behind heavily medicated eyes.

He realized I wasn’t simply comfortable.

I was becoming unreachable.

Looking back, I honestly believe I came frighteningly close to not waking up.

Whether it was the combination of medications, my body’s condition, or the perfect storm of both, I don’t know.

What I do know is this…

Joe spoke up.

He insisted something wasn’t right.

He advocated for me when I couldn’t advocate for myself.

Cancer patients need someone like that.

Someone willing to ask uncomfortable questions.

Someone willing to say, “Stop. This doesn’t feel right.”

Because when you’re exhausted, septic, terrified, and medicated, your voice becomes very small.

Sometimes someone else has to use theirs.

Eventually the infection began to surrender.

The fevers eased.

Blood cultures improved.

A PICC line replaced the infected port.

I was finally discharged.

But I wasn’t the same woman who had walked into that hospital.

Not even close.

The physical wounds eventually healed.

The emotional ones took much longer.

Then, as if the universe wanted one more twist in an already unbelievable story…

The chemotherapy shortage that had interrupted my treatment became national news.

The New York Times reached out to interview me.

Think about that for a second.

A woman lying in a hospital bed with metastatic osteosarcoma suddenly found herself explaining to one of the world’s largest newspapers what it feels like to be told your life-saving chemotherapy isn’t available.

I never wanted to become the face of a drug shortage.

I just wanted my treatment.

But if sharing my story helped people understand that chemotherapy shortages aren’t statistics…

They’re people.

They’re families.

They’re birthdays missed.

They’re sleepless nights.

They’re fear wrapped in an IV bag that never arrives.

Then telling my story became one more way to fight.

Cancer had already taken enough from me.

It wasn’t going to take my voice too.

Looking back now, I realize something.

That hospital stay didn’t just test my body.

It tested my spirit.

It taught me that surviving cancer isn’t just about surviving the disease.

Sometimes it’s about surviving everything that happens while you’re trying to treat it.

And somehow…

Against every odd imaginable…

I did.