She is facing a different kind of battle years after she thought she was done with the disease. The hardest part is not so much the days right after being free from the hospital, but rather having survived for quite some time. She is only allowed to be away from the hospital for 100 days. When she is out of the hospital, she goes on a solo road trip with her dog across the United States, visiting many people who made meaningful contact with her. Her terrier and constant companion and letters from strangers fill her days. It fills your chest with shards of glass ….” At about the time that Melissa dies, she realizes she and Will are finished. It comes in the night and rips you from your sleep. Losing her best friend, Melissa, a fellow cancer sufferer, she writes, “Grief is a ghost that visits you without warning. She writes as often as she can, with a vomit pail close by. In one week alone she had 20 infusions of “heavy duty” chemotherapy. Jaouad writes of the harrowing time of recovery, “I felt as though I’d entered an alien spaceship.” It had only been one year since her diagnosis however, she couldn’t remember what it was like to be herself.
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