LIVERMORE – Amanda Oliver cannot wait for chemotherapy treatment to be over.

She’s tired, she has no energy, she’s cranky, she suffers from anxiety and she is bald.

The latter doesn’t bother her, she said.

It’s cooler.

“I have to be careful because of the sun,” Oliver said.

The 20-year-old shaved her head after her brown hair started to fall out.

Oliver was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer in May. In February, she had a 20-pound tumor and one ovary plus part of the other one removed.

Oliver’s classmates in the Livermore Falls High School class of 2003 are holding a benefit supper for her from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday at the VFW in Jay.

Oliver hadn’t known what to expect before she began chemotherapy treatment in early June; now she knows.

At the time, she had said she was nervous and scared and didn’t know what was going to happen. She had heard so much about chemotherapy.

“There have been times when it was worse than I expected, but then there’s been times it wasn’t nowhere near as bad as I expected,” she said.

On Monday, she started her last full week of treatment in Scarborough, which will be followed by single sessions over the next two weeks.

Chemotherapy “makes you really, really sick to your stomach, even with the pills I take for nausea,” Oliver said.

She didn’t have the anti-nausea medicine, which costs $6,000 for a 15-day supply, after the first week of treatment, and she was very sick for most of the weekend.

Oliver had a port inserted into her chest so she could receive the drugs intravenously.

Community Concepts Inc. picks her up at 6 a.m. and drives her to Scarborough. Some of the medicine makes her sleepy, she said, and she’ll sleep during her six-hour treatment.

“I’m going to be glad when it’s over so bad,” Oliver said Friday. “I want to go out and do something but right now that’s not possible.”

Besides being tired with no energy, she is short of breath when she walks, she added.

“I’ll be glad to get to work,” she said.

For now, she lives at her mother’s, having given up an apartment in Jay.

After her treatment is over, doctors will do exploratory surgery to see how everything is. Once again, Oliver is not sure what to expect.

She’s also going to be tested for diabetes.

“I hope it’s over but I have a feeling it’s just the beginning because they told me (before chemotherapy) that there is no guarantee it will not grow back,” Oliver said. “And I’ve been noticing my stomach is getting bigger and there is a lump.”


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