She's got two more weekly chemotherapy treatments to go, but that doesn't make it any easier when she feels as crappy as she does today. She says it was easier, sort of, when she was sicker, because back then she was able to sleep through some of the day. Now she's not sick enough to sleep that much, she's left with no energy to do the things that might take her mind off how bad she feels.

She says for her, it's been like a hostage crisis. The cancer has taken her body hostage, and her body is no longer something she can take for granted, something that is just part of who she is. Her body has been taken from her, out of her control, bundled away to be treated cruelly and denied the basic nourishing freedoms it deserves. She's locked in a terrible battle with the cancer, an awful lock-down-and-seek-and-destroy campaign.

Courtyards echo with low-flying helicopters, the air is thick with the smell of ashes, the night is broken by shelling, weeping and desperate, furtive struggles of evasion, coercion and suppression. Each neighbourhood must be purged at whatever terrible cost, to smoke out the perpetrators from their dark basements and hidden caves. Innocent bystanders become collateral damage — her hair, digestive tract lining, lymphatic and endocrine system, her menstrual cycle, her muscles, ligaments, bones and even her mind. They must all pay a terrible price to free the hostage and bring the kidnappers to justice.

For me, it's been more like a prison sentence. The person I know and love was sentenced to chemo prison for a year. She's always lived a healthy life, so it was for a crime she didn't commit. While she's in chemo prison I don't get to be with the person I love, and terrible things are inflicted on her while she's there, and even when she's ready to tell me about, I'll never truly understand them.

Chemo prison has changed her; made her tougher, sure, but also physically damaged her. Worse, it's scarred her emotionally, in ways both obvious and subtle, things we'll have to uncover and deal with for many years to come.

Once a week, just before the next chemo cycle begins, Boy8 and I get to go visit her. The fog of chemo lifts just enough that we get about a day, sometimes two, with the person we know as wife and mother, lover and friend.

It's always so good to see her but also so awful, because we're all trying not to count every minute, trying not to think about what happens when our time is up. We tell her about what we've been doing, make light of the things she's missed out on, talk about all the great things we're going to do when she gets out.

We tell her nothing's going to change because of this, we'll still be there when she gets out, life will return to normal.

But then they come for her again, and we have to say goodbye.