These photos were taken two days apart: above, the day before chemo began, and below, the day after the first treatment, when I smugly decided to get rid of my hair before chemo had the chance. Little did I know how much was left to shed.

Photo courtesy of Alex de Parry

When my eyes opened the morning following my first chemo treatment, I was surprised to find my hair hadn't fallen out overnight. I hadn't tossed my cookies. And I didn't even feel like I might. How anti-climactic can you get? All that time I spent worrying -- wasted. Silly me.

Feeling smug, I decided chemotherapy and cancer weren't about to decide when I would lose my hair. I'd lose it myself and show them a thing or two about who was in charge. And so I had my hair cut that day. Short. Really short. At least for me. The chemo cut, I called it. And giving up most of my hair, on my own terms, gave me some sense of control over my life and the amount of mess I would make when I started to shed. Little did I know how much was left.

Except for popping by the hospital for blood tests, the next three weeks were uneventful. I felt perfectly fine. When the second treatment rolled around, I waltzed into the hospital thinking myself a seasoned chemo pro, happy to have life-saving toxins enter my body.

A week later, sleep began to strike at the most inopportune times. Like the night we were having dinner with friends and I dozed off in the dining chair somewhere in the middle of dinner. Alex woke me when it was time to go home and I joked that at least I hadn't landed in my plate, but inside, I fumed that my own body couldn't be trusted to perform the simple act of staying awake.

By the third week of the second chemo cycle, I was not only exhausted but brewing a fever. Chemo, which doesn't distinguish between healthy and diseased cells, had reduced my healthy, infection-fighting neutrophils to dangerous levels. Neutropenia, it's called.

Dr. Kaminski admitted me to a private room in the hospital in order to minimize contact with anyone who might infect me. Large doses of antibiotics were pumped into me, and since other patients were out of sight, they were also out of mind. I still did not consider myself particularly ill, although I was. I was simply in some clinical hideaway for a small adjustment, an inconvenient but short incarceration of two days. Nothing more, nothing less. Alex, on the other hand, began to suspect this roller coaster we were on was going to be bumpier than either of us expected.

I was home for two days when another fever struck and a pain stabbed at my midsection so severely that I literally crawled on all fours up the stairs to reach the bedroom. Dr. Kaminski invited me straight back to the hospital, but this time admitted me to a different floor. Approaching it, with Alex pushing me in a wheelchair, I was stunned to read the sign on its double doors: "Hematology Oncology Unit/Bone Marrow Transplant/Restricted Area."

Whoa ... restricted from what? That sign signified, in no uncertain terms, how sick Dr. Kaminski thought I was. It stripped away my brave person mask and filled my eyes with tears that made me wonder what was in store for me behind the doors. Alex knelt beside me, gathered me in his arms, and tried to wipe away my tears. As he pushed me through them, I felt like a repeat offender entering San Quentin. Indeed, severed from the healthy world I knew, my world suddenly shrunk to the size of a cell.

Coming Tuesday: Hotel Hell. Part 1.

Betsy de Parry is the author of The Roller Coaster Chronicles and host of a series of webcasts about cancer. Find her on Facebook or Twitter or e-mail her.