Comments on the Stages of Re-growing Hair

About a month and a half ago I was in Publix picking up some snack foods for a movie/study session with some classmates. I had forgotten to bring a hat with me, as it was a warm day and I was feeling quite comfortable and didn’t think of it. I was standing in the produce section trying to decide between the big bag of carrots and the small bag of carrots when a woman comes up next to me and seems to be similarly contemplating the carrot situation. Suddenly she said, “So did you do it on a dare,” and I thought that she must be on the phone with someone… but then she finished her sentence: “or did you just shave it because you felt like it.”
Of course at this point I knew that she was talking to me, but I delayed the looking up response by about five seconds because I was uncertain of how to respond. She picked up a bag of carrots and was looking at me when I finally ded look up. I said, “Uh, no… I have cancer and it fell out because of the treatment. It’s just starting to grow back.”
The woman’s face went kind of blank and then quickly regained composure and she began explaining to me that she was asking because her daughter is in the habit of shaving her head randomly as well as coloring her hair blue, purple and pink.
At the time my hair didn’t exactly look like it was buzzed; it looked more like it had fallen out and was just starting to debate whether or not it should come back; it was fuzzy, sparse and very, very soft. Really, it looked like more like the fuzz on a rabbit’s rump and less like human hair. But I wasn’t angry; the woman just seemed to be looking at me from a specific angle that she was familiar with and I wasn’t. So I talked to her. We laughed and joked for about 15 minutes and when we departed I hoped that our interaction wasn’t one of those incidents that she would look back on in ten years and think, “I can’t believe I did that… I’m a terrible person.” (Or anything of the sort)

………………………………………………………………..

Recently my hair has started to look more like hair and less like ducklings. I have even discovered that I have a white patch growing in the very front and center of my hair line. I’m hoping that the old age has been concentrated specifically to this area rather than being evenly distributed all around my head, that way I can look cool like Rouge from X-Men rather then like old from Life.

Unfortunately this also makes me look like “rebellious” from “the youth,” which is very much frowned upon here in good old Homosassa Florida, where they prefer “inbred” from “the rednecks” over anything representing “not conservative” (which included McCain until he became the Republican presidential candidate).

Anyway, my new hair growth includes most follicles, but not all of them yet, because the chemotherapy is still attacking my being. Because not all of my hair has chosen to come back at this time, I have chosen not to let it grow to any significant length because I prefer not to look like an under-nourished animal.
This apparently has the effect of making me look like a rebellious teenager and therefore gives people the right to stare at me without inhibition and give me disapproving looks.

Today I did not bring a hat with me when I went to Publix and I got lots of these stares and looks, starting in the parking lot and mostly from senior citizens, especially of the female variety. When I had picked out a package of chicken breasts and was walking away from the poultry bin, an older, male Publix employee said to me, “I like your hair cut.”
I couldn’t help but laugh because it just seemed so random and struck me as funny. I could tell from the confused look on the man’s face that this was an inappropriate response, so I tried to wrestle my laughter into submission while spewing out a surprisingly coherent “thank you.”

People that I am close to told me while I was bald that I “pull the look of well,” (I like to believe that they weren’t referring to the cancer look in general) and my mom has told me many times that I look really good with super short hair.
I have heard “It’s just like _______ (choose: Sinead O’Connor, J.I. Jane, Natalie Portman)” repeatedly from lots of people and my dad, brother and most of my brother’s friends have shaved their heads in tribute. I was simply happy that my head is a good shape and that my ears aren’t large.

I like not having much hair and now that I’m mostly used to it I find that when I look at pictures where I have long hair, I am surprised at how strange I look. At some point in the not too distant future the poison will finally drain completely out of me and hair will spill forth from my unpolluted scalp and redecorate this head of mine. I will then be faced with something that was more or less taken away from me on October 5th, 2007 when the surgeon found that the cancer had spread into the lymph nodes, thus making chemotherapy an important part of killing Bob: a choice regarding the aesthetics of my body. Sure, I could have chosen to leave the lump there and remain unscarred, and I did, after all, choose not to have my breast taken off all together, but those were forced choices that I wouldn’t have made had I been cancer free, so I don’t really count those.

Regarding my new hair, though, I have all kinds of choice, more now than I did pre-cancer, because it is entirely likely that I never would have chosen to cut my hair so short, never mind buzz it, were it not going to fall out in the first place. I used to be in the habit of growing it very long and then putting it in a ponytail and having it cut about chin length and donated to Locks of Love. Now, however, I’m considering keeping it very short… at least for a while.

But those looks, those unapologetic stares and presumptuous opinions you can see forming behind their eyes. I often avoid looking at people these days because sometimes I just don’t want to deal with it. Before, when I was bald and my eyelashes and eyebrows were mostly gone and I was pale and sickly and just generally looked like a cancer patient, the looks were different. There were kind eyes and apologetic smiles (for staring, I think) and there was no nastiness. As soon as it started kind of coming back, though, the looks started to change. Slowly at first, and I thought that perhaps it was in my imagination, that I was subconsciously afraid of what people thought (which is not a normal habit of mine). But then people started randomly saying stuff, usually at a Publix store (but never at the same one), and old ladies started giving me bluntly mean looks and people started staring unabashedly and with a tinge of disgust, like I’ve done something that has torn the moral fiber of our great nation and deserve to be punished by means of rude behavior from the morally superior.

On the other hand, on the days that I feel good and am most similar to my “normal” self, these stares and looks not only lack the effect of making me feel like I need to justify my hair, but they make me want to keep my hair varying lengths of short, sometimes longish to show off the white, with the express intention of making people gawk openly and make comments. Perhaps I’ll start wearing t-shirts that say stuff like, “Young people get breast cancer too. Stop staring and tell your granddaughter to check herself,” perhaps with “you morally superior bitch” in very small print at the end of the sentence.

In any case, it is interesting to be me, and I must admit that I very much enjoy it. And the oddities and downsides? Well, they just serve to make it more interesting. After all, variety is the spice of life, right?

When I look in the mirror, what I see, is not myself looking back at me

Sometimes when I pass by a reflective surface of some sort and turn my head to look, I am taken aback by what peers back at me.

It is not me in there looking out, that is for certain. I am a vibrant, happy, fun loving sister/aunt/daughter/friend/girlfriend who has a full and enjoyable life and loves to do all kinds of stuff at all different times of the day with the people I love; but that person in the mirror — that person who could not possibly be me — has quite obviously had the life sucked out of them by some terrible turn of events.

The person in the mirror is pale and sickly, void of hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. They are alien — listless and lacking facial definition. I look at them in shock, bewildered at how they got in the mirror, but they wear only an expression of desperate and hopeless blankness, seemingly unable to register anything else, any other emotion, any emotion at all. Perhaps it is just I who cannot read the emotion on their alien face, though, so I concentrate harder.

I look into their eyes, their dull, tired, shadowed eyes, and I look for the life that I know is there, somewhere — it has to be — but I can’t see it… why can’t I see it?

The Rebellious Youth

I went to Publix the other day wearing a pink bandanna that one of the oncology nurses gave me. I bought an assortment of foods, including mussels, garlic and white wine. Naturally, I had to prove that I was old enough to purchase alcohol and when the cashier was looking at my ID she said, “I never would have guessed;” assuming that she was referring to my age I said, “Yeah, I almost always got carded before, but since my hair fell out I get carded for everything all the time, even cold medicine.” She laughed and kind of made this sad face at the same time and said, “Well, at least it’ll grow back, right?” to which I replied, “Yeah, my doctor told me it might grow back curly, but that it should go back to normal after a while, although she’s had two patients whose hair never went back.”

The woman standing in line behind me who was in her mid to late 50’s and had previously compared her fatty foods to my significantly healthier foods said, “Mine didn’t grow back curly, and the doctor told me the same thing.” I told her that I was always perfectly happy with my hair and that I would love for it to come back the same and she told me that hers came back a little thicker, but who doesn’t want thicker hair? I agreed, and then she said, “Did your hair actually fall out, or did you just shave it?” I immediately felt like I had to explain myself and told her how my hair had been to the middle of my back and I cut it short to kind of adjust to less hair and then when it started coming out by the handfuls that I buzzed it because it was getting everywhere and that I found it much less traumatic to have tiny bits of hair all over my hands than having endless handfuls of hair coming out. She kind of nodded and then announced how depressing it was to have your hair coming out by the handfuls.

I signed my credit card receipt, the cashier wished me luck in everything, said it was nice to see someone so positive and told me to keep smiling (“you have a beautiful smile,” she said) and I left the store.

While driving home, I suddenly realized that the woman in line behind me was challenging me, actually challenging me to see if my cancer was legitimate, or as serious as hers was, or something… I don’t know.
Why would she do that? Why would anyone do that?

And then I realized it was just like everything else… just like every other damn part of this whole cancer thing… it’s the same reason doctors didn’t treat it like it was serious in the first place, the same reason that the Health Department blew me off, the same reason the biopsy surgeon’s office made me wait two weeks for a consultation, the same reason that woman gave me such a dirty look back in October for saying “at least it’s a good month to get breast cancer,” the same reason I can’t get financial assistance and the same reason that no one can believe that I have breast cancer: I’m too young, and I look even younger. I don’t look old enough to buy Tylenol Cold and Flu, never mind alcohol or to have breast cancer.

But hey, guess what, this just in: Cancer doesn’t care how young I am.

Why does everyone else?

On Getting Buzzed

On Thanksgiving eve of 2007, my hair started falling out.

This is, of course, to be expected, mostly because all of my nurses and doctors have told me that it WILL, without fail, fall out within 2-4 weeks of my first treatment. Mine was within 15 days.

I’ve said all along that when my hair started falling out I would simply shave my head and be fine with it. I was resolved to take it in stride, to brush it off like it was no big deal and not let it bother me. I told everyone that I would be a-ok and that it didn’t matter and that all I really needed to do was prepare myself for the event by cutting my back length hair very short, which I did… twice.

The thing is that it is a very unsettling moment when you run your fingers through your hair and come up with an unusually large quantity of it in your hand; in that moment even the most determined heart suddenly falters, for it is in that moment that all of the inward feelings of sickness are prominently and violently expressed in a physically outward manner that causes the brain to almost shriek, “Oh God, I’m actually as ill as I feel.”

So at first I was a little upset. Within this upset, however, I found new energy which I used to empty the dishwasher, do the dishes in the sink, make corn bread for my stuffing recipe and mess up part of another recipe. As the adrenaline high wore off, though, I resorted to calling my mom.

I couldn’t stop running my fingers through my hair and then looking to see how much I’d collected, though, and so while on the phone with my mom I decided that I ought to put my hair in a glass to help keep it from getting into everything. So for about an hour I sat on the phone with various people while running my fingers through my hair and placing all of the loose strands in a cup. Now, while there is something absolutely mesmerizing about effortlessly taking the hair from your head and placing it in a cup before you, it is equally disconcerting and has the ill effect of causing a resolute mind to crumble just long enough for the affected soul to release her frustration in the form of unwanted and demanding tears.

It is in this confusion of weakened resolve, frustration and strangeness that I found myself desperately wanting a razor to rid myself of the increasing burden of my hair. Unfortunately no one had a functioning electric razor in their possession at that time, and it was late and I was tired and at least 20 minutes from the nearest 24 hour Wal-Mart; thankfully, however, I have been incredibly fortunate to find myself in the company of amazing family and friends, and my mother and father drove to Wal-Mart at 10:30pm, bought me an electric razor, and then drove 20 minutes each way to leave it in my unlocked car so that I might use it in the morning.

The next morning Bryan and I stepped outside and unceremoniously shaved my head.

And so it came to be that on Thanksgiving 2007, I sported my new buzz cut with bald patches at two family dinners, was thankful for my friends and family in a whole new way and minimized the amount of hair in my stuffing.