It’s Tuesday morning at the Duly Health and Care Center in Tinley Park.

The parking lot is nearly full.

I am accompanying my dear cousin Kathy Neuberg on her third session of chemotherapy.

The day begins at the bloodwork station. Then it’s on to the doctor’s office, where Kathy hopes that the heavy sweater she’s wearing — her late father’s — will tip the scales, making it look like she hasn’t lost any more weight.

“I’ve been sick,” she tells the doctor. “Stomach, digestion problems.”

The physician scans the bloodwork results and reveals her concerns: hemoglobin is down, weight is down.

“I need you to eat, eat, eat. Protein,” she encouraged.

“Easier said than done,” Kathy whispers to me on our way to the chemo room.

About a dozen stations form a semicircle around the nurse’s desk. Each enclave features a beige lounger, a chair for a guest, a small TV on a small table and a hospital-like privacy curtain.

Some people are here for the first time; some are veterans. Some bring comforters or teddy bears or small coolers with ice packs to relieve the burning, stabbing pain of neuropathy. The center provides water and snacks.

Most, if not all, are here for the day — three-four-five hours of chemo and pre- and post-treatments of steroids and other medications.

“Is it comforting to know you’re not alone?” I ask Kathy after we settle in.

“It’s kinda’ disturbing that so many people have cancer,” she says. According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 1.8 million Americans were diagnosed with the disease in 2021.

“I see really old people, people my age (67) and some younger,” she says. “It’s like cancer has become a lifestyle.”

Kathy was diagnosed with triple negative with lymph node breast cancer in December. The news was both crushing and a relief “of sorts.”

“I had been so sick since Mother’s Day,” she said. “I had horrible stomach aches and horrible nightmares. I was sleeping all the time. It took a long time for them to figure out what was going on.”

A breast ultrasound revealed the cause. Like many women with “dense” breast tissue, Kathy had been prescribed the supplementary post-mammogram test so doctors could get a clearer look.

Her treatment plan starts with six rounds of chemo, followed by radiation and then surgery. It will be a long year of sickness, surgical decision-making and suffering, but she is confident it will end well.

“It’s weird but I was looking forward to chemo,” she said. “Because I want this to be over and because I hoped it would make me feel better.”

Sometimes it does. Sometimes it makes her feel worse. Nausea and exhaustion are the worst of it. The emotional trauma is intense.

“I’m trying to get my things in order,” she said. “I saw how crazy things could get when my dad was dying. I don’t want that. I want people to stay calm.”

This isn’t the Tinley Park resident’s first go-round with mortality. Fifteen years ago, doctors thought she had ovarian cancer. Before surgery, she said, she went on a “bender,” buying “a huge Christmas” for everyone.

“I was ordering things from Ireland,” she said, laughing. “My husband thought I’d lost my mind.”

Surgery revealed a non-cancerous tumor wrapped around her urethra.

This time, though, the beast is real.

“It’s shocking to learn you have it, but I’m hoping this will give me a new outlook on life. I have been stressed out for the past 10 years and I think stress plays a major part in this,” she said. “I was not getting enough sleep, not getting good nutrition. I was down to 89 pounds.”

Since 2015, she had been on a caregiving circuit, tending to the needs of other seriously ill family members and working as a home health care provider.

“I was taking care of so many others but I wasn’t taking care of myself,” she said.

Among the inevitable side effects of having a potentially deadly disease is the “assessment,” the lookback on one’s life, the verdict on whether or not you made the best of your time.

The oldest of five, Kathy was kind of a wild child growing up on the South Side of Chicago. She walked that line between curiosity and trouble. And, as a kid, I idolized that.

But she also was responsible beyond her years, looking out for her younger siblings and step-siblings. I admired that, as well.

“I used to go out and not come home until the street lights came on. I used to have ‘adventures,’” she said. “Sometimes I think I’m lucky to be alive.”

On the other hand, dabbling in danger makes a person resilient.

“I’m a survivor,” she said, smiling.

A year older than me, and with much more courage than I could ever muster, Kathy is sharp, witty, courageous. As an adolescent, she was a rare mix of carefree and sensibility.

She encouraged me to try canoeing, horseback riding and swearing.

My middle-school-self hitched my star to her wagon the first time we hung out. I was lucky to spend whole weeks with her over several summers.

Did we get in trouble? Sometimes. Mostly, we had “adventures.”

By the time I entered high school, we had gone our separate ways. I took with me a vital life lesson: Don’t be afraid to try new things, but don’t be stupid when it comes to trying new things.

And that is how I’ve lived my life — pushing the envelope, without letting the contents fall to the floor.

I don’t know if I would have become a journalist, or a traveler, or even a college graduate without her rascally influence.

I am forever indebted.

As a mother of three, Kathy is positivity with a dose of mischief, and a bit of mysticism to keep things interesting. When she learned I had tickets to the Naperville Witches Night Out, she immediately claimed one. Still, cancer attacks attitude as surely as it attacks cells.

Nurses scurry from station to station. Monitors beep. Bags of liquid poison get drained and replaced.

It doesn’t hurt going in, Kathy says. The side effects come later in the week, once the steroids wear off.

“My hair was so crappy anyway. But the way it fell out, from the bottom, in big chunks — ugh. I looked like some kind of monster. When I just had a few strands, I got the buzz. And I cried,” she said.

“Everything is new, different, overwhelming.”

Then came the daunting task of having to explain things to her grandsons.

With tenderness, she told them she was sick, but not to be afraid because she wasn’t afraid.

She invited the 5-year-old to rub her bare head.

“I told him it’s just like when your daddy gives you a buzz cut,” she said. “He laughed and laughed.”

Her message to others, she said, is simple:

“Get rid of resentment. If there’s someone you hate, pray for them. It helps you let it go,” she said.

“Don’t let fear get to you. Don’t let go of hope,” she said.

She is planning a trip out west, “when all this is over,” she said. She wants to rent an RV and take her ailing mother, her disabled sister and her husband to visit her brother, who also has health issues, in Nevada.

At 3:30 p.m., the last bag of her specialized chemo mix is hung. She turns to me and says, “This is overwhelming, Donna.”

My eyes well. And then, quickly, she resets and smiles.

“The steroids make me high,” she giggles, apologetically. “That must be why they call it a cocktail.”

Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years. She can be reached at donnavickroy4@gmail.com.