HAIR LOSS

August through to November 2012. Obviously this is the most noticeable thing for other people.  It used to fill me with such horror when I saw women with scarves on their heads, covering up their baldness, but oh how we change.  By the end of chemo, I would see such women and myself with brand new eyes.  I now see beauty, pride, courage, strength and humanity. I see the real woman in myself and in the eyes of other oncology patients.

It was round about session 3/4 that my hair started to gradually fall out.  I had obstinately not had it cut short, in denial up to the end, and I don't know if this was such a bad thing all things told.  What it meant was I lost my hair little by little (and boy did I have a lot) and somehow this helped me get used to the idea.  It was shocking and distressful to start with, but then after a while I also took a perverse kind of pleasure in pulling out loose locks.   Like popping bubble wrap or bursting balloons. I mean, when else in your life will you be able to do such a rebellious, anarchic act with such wild abandon?  When it got so tangled up at the back, loose hair twisted round in a ball, I took out the scissors and gave it the chop.  Pure peverse pleasure again.  I was wearing a handkerchief on my head by then, and still had hair that showed, so it didn't matter how it was cut.  Well, by week 11 there were wisps left.  Perhaps more hair would have remained if I had cut it short from the start (I mean I pulled out enough hair for 3 wigs), who knows?  

People do stare at you, or rather look for a second too long. It doesn't bother me, surprisingly it didn't bother from the very start (I have far more serious things to think about) but I do confess there are certain acquaintances I haven't wanted to see me looking like this, perhaps people I put up a front with, people with whom I'm on the defensive, people whom I don't trust fully.  Oh, the ego. With strangers I couldn't give a flying hoot, and with good friends I have no qualms taking off whatever is covering my head. It was a shock for my sister when we first skyped during chemo and she absent-mindedly said on seeing me "what's that tea cozy doing on your head?" I whipped off my woolly hat and she screamed "put it on again"!  It was very funny to make her squeal.  I think it took her just the length of that one call to get used to the idea.  And I have immense admiration for the women who don't cover their head at all.

Four weeks after finishing chemo, I look like a skinhead - a nice fuzzy growth sprouting all over my scalp.  Taking longer than I thought, but then again nothing about this whole process is anything like what I imagined.  Chemo stopped 16 October, while still warm in Barcelona.  Now it's late November and I just want hair to keep warm!  Never thought I'd ever say that!