40 THE CEDARVILLE REVIEW cells lining the digestive tract, and hair follicles. Side effects of the drug include low blood counts, mouth sores, nausea, and hair loss. The body becomes a battleground in the war against cancer, and healthy cells are the casualties. After all, mustard gas is an agent of chemical warfare. *** Doxorubicin, bleomycin, vincristine, etoposide, prednisone, cyclophosphamide. The words have been tossed around me from late November to mid-February. They haven’t quite left me yet, but I can feel them fading away in the whispers of the ocean and the whip of the wind, slowly sailing across the Long Island Sound all the way to the distant thread of Connecticut on the horizon. I am finally seeing the ocean again. It is cold and beautiful. My parents and I walk down the rocky, shell-filled beach. There are bare, twisting trees on our right and lapping green-blue waves on our left. Overhead, streaking, puffy white clouds contrast the deep blue sky, and lone gulls soar across the water. The air is wonderfully salty. As my parents and I walk, we happen across our neighbor, Ruth, with a friend of hers and her shaggy black dog with graying fur. My parents’ greetings to her rapidly fade into confusion as they notice her distant but decided guard of a small gray lump several feet away.
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