The line is long to check in at the infusion center.

This is where you come to get chemo. Blood products. Monthly shots. Antibiotics.

Whatever is needed to fight the beast of cancer – or at least keep it at bay – is administered here. Lord willing it works.

One patient is belching, near vomiting, struggling to keep it together behind her cotton mask.

An elderly woman comes in, her arms covered in bruises, with a deep purple bruise on her face. She explains to the receptionist that she hit her face with the car door when she opened it. It matches my arms now, she laughs. You know how I like to match, she chuckles.

There isn’t an ounce of spare flesh on her, and the skin she has is sagging and wrinkled with time. She persists.

Four more of us wait, patiently or impatiently, for our treatments. Today, I’m getting my monthly Zolodex shot. As I will every month for 3 1/2 more years.

It’s a very small price to pay.

More people come in, give their name, sit down.

Wait.

Every time I am here, though, I am counting my blessings.