Pinky
A cancer diagnosis and all that follows is nothing short of dramatic and traumatic. I knew I’d lose my hair 2 weeks after my first infusion but nothing really prepares you for how it all goes down. Two weeks on the dot, I drove my sons to school and ran my fingers through my hair and clumps were coming out in my car. I panicked even though I knew it was coming. It came out in clumps every few hours. Within 3 days, I was bald. That final day, I knew it was going to happen and stared at the few random tufts of fair on my hair, giving me a very short pixie cut but not looking like I was losing my hair. I sighed and hopped into the shower. That last shampoo broke me. All of it came out in the shower and I was too petrified to look in the mirror or leave that room so I sat on the floor and cried for an hour. I decided to give myself a day to mourn my hair and feel all the lousy feels. It sucked, it itched and it hurt, physically and emotionally. The next day, I would choose to own that bald head and make it work for me. I took a picture of my shiny dome, Uncle Fester style as a way of telling cancer it could go F itself. It felt liberating and as though I was in control again.
I wore a pink wig all through my treatments. Pink is pretty and the color of breast cancer. In no way do I feel that the pinkness diminishes the grotesque battle and its aftermath. Instead, I saw it as a sign to remind myself that as a cancer patient, I was still feminine. As my hair began to grow back, I was thrilled to see white hair and really hoped it would stay. I wound up with a weird pewter and white combination and straighter than I ever had. Again, another learning curve. Eleven months after it began to grow, I got my first real hair cut and it was lovely, 3 months later, my second. I could begin to plan what I wanted to look like again. Then, the lockdowns began.
I was back to the solace of quarantine life, this time with my family in tow. I was a pro, were they? Turns out, we make a great team!
There went my planning for hair and tattoo, but how long could this be, right? There went my visions of growing it back into a long layered or a bob and trying to look less crazy while doing so. Haircuts were clearly out of the question for me…and still are. Let’s not talk about the two year hiatus of manicures and pedicures.
So here we are, nine months in and no real end in the near future. I have yet to get a haircut. I’ve decided to keep trimming it myself and changing it up every two weeks. I have added some rose gold tones to it, nothing permanent, yet. It keeps me entertained. Sometimes I am quite pleased and the others, well, I just remind myself that it really is only hair.