Hair

Losing your hair because of chemo sucks because that goddamn bandana on your head announces to the whole world that you're a cancer patient and every stranger on the street looks sorry for you. I don't want strangers to look sorry for me; I want them to do what they're supposed to do and ignore me entirely. Please.

As soon as my first chemo treatment was scheduled, I ordered a brightly colored pack of bandanas from Amazon. Over the next couple weeks, I anxiously awaited my hair falling out because I just wanted it to be over and done with so I could move on to the next part of being a cancer patient, not that I knew what that meant. Acceptance, probably. Maybe wild-eyed rage, because fuck cancer. 

There was always the hope that my hair wouldn't fall out at all and I'd never have to have a stranger look at me with That Look of Sympathy in the streets--but I doubted luck would be on my side on that one.

I knew approximately when I'd be losing my hair because I had asked my cousin who went through breast cancer when she lost hers. Sure enough, after my third chemo treatment, huge clumps of hair came off in my hands in the shower. I hacked off the few strands that remained and then got a more even buzz cut once I reached my mother in Dallas. Patches of hair remain on my head but have stopped growing.  

What was more disconcerting than the bald head, however, was seeing that my pubic hair was coming out too. No one warns you about that part. It seems sacrilegious almost. Like, how dare my pubes abandon me when my uterus has already jumped ship into the cancer waters. Another betrayal most severe. 

Even though I knew it was likely I'd lose my hair because of the particular chemotherapy I was prescribed, and I knew approximately when it would happen, it was still a shock to see a handful of dark locks in the shower that day. Like, Okay, this is really happening. To ME. 

I'm a cancer patient. There's no denying it now. 

That's all anyone sees when they look at me or my Facebook avatar and see the telltale bandana on my bald scalp. I want to burn all my fucking bandanas in the firepit, but then I'd have to go around bald or in baseball hats and those options don't sound any better. Besides, I don't think I have the ovaries to go G.I. Jane; that's just simply more badass than I'm capable of. I'm not in my thirties with my interesting body piercings and midriff-revealing tops my mother hates anymore.  

Then there's the alien-face aspects of losing your hair to chemo: the eyelashes and eyebrows go too. I saw five or six fall out at a time, neatly grouped together on the white kitchen counter as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world to fling themselves off my face. Rude. And weird as fuck all. I can barely look at myself in the mirror without studying where my previously expressive eyebrows are supposed to be. 

Oddly enough, the leg hair stayed. I'm guessing if I actually shaved, it would prove that the hair stopped growing though. 

But forget all of that, because "Oh no, I have chemo and I lost all my hair" can be found on a thousand other cancer blogs. Maybe not the bit about the pubic hair though.

Now let's talk about WIG SHOPPING. 

About a week after my hair fell out, my father and aunt were in town to help me move. After we'd gotten everything into the POD, we decided it was the much-awaited time to go wig shopping. 

I already knew I wanted a brightly colored wig, probably turquoise, and a realistic brunette one that was similar to my natural hair. Once we got to the wig shop and saw how cheap they were, I decided to get four total: a neon pink bob with black and white accents, a cobalt blue angled bob, a sophisticated black one similar to Monica Geller from Friends, and one with long beautiful wide-looped curls (which looked shockingly good on my rock star brother).

Before leaving the shop, of course I had to try on the most absurd and outlandish wig in the place: a mid-back length Dolly Parton mountain of platinum blonde curls. It made me look like a fabulous seventies debutante porn star.

As we were driving home (and I was sending tons of pictures to friends), my father said that that was the most he'd seen me smile since he'd gotten to Portland a week earlier. And he was right, it was all worth it just for that, because even more than a wig to cover my bald head, I needed a smile to spread across my face. 

Sadly, I have to report that I haven't actually worn any of the wigs other than with friends for funny photos. Once we brought my bags of cheap wigs home and taken tons of goofy photos (including one of the entire family in wigs that went out with the Christmas cards this year), I looked at myself in the mirror and saw exactly the same thing as before that I was hoping to replace: the same sad, bald girl, pissed off that she'd lost all her hair to cancer. 

Retreat

When I was diagnosed with cancer five months ago, I quit my entire life. Quit working on my book, quit Portland, quit art. I packed everything up into a single POD and moved to Dallas to be with my family for treatment and my final year on this fine earth, if I believed my oncologist's prognosis (which I don't, because fuck cancer).

Fortunately my parents had just finished building their dream lakehouse outside of Dallas where they gave me the master suite so there was room for my art desk, computer desk, and books, complete with a view of the lake. The lakehouse has a multi-colored gas fireplace, enormous kitchen with plenty of room to make a mess when baking cookies, plump leather armchairs for curling up with my Kindle, and a master shower lined in Carrera marble big enough for orgies. 

Then there's the outdoors: a brand-new dock with a table and power outlet for writing, a fire pit, a covered deck where we eat as many of our meals as possible, a gazebo, and best of all, A HAMMOCK. Sure, my brother and I bought the hammock as a present for the entire family, but I'm already the only one who has used it for more than five minutes, so it's basically mine. 

It's like living at a retreat. Friends who've visited or seen photos have said as much. I didn't think of it that way at first, but now I don't see how I couldn't, because you couldn't design a better home for a cancer patient fighting for her life and trying to heal. 

There's a flipside, however. It's so easy to see the lakehouse as a place to retreat that it's tempting to retreat all the way inside myself, with reading, writing, making art, watching tv, or sleeping. 

If it weren't for living with my parents, I'd probably never get out of bed. There have been many days when doing so felt like my big win for the day and nothing more should be expected of me aside from eating. 

Instead I get up and fake being a normal human. 

That's what it feels like--faking normalcy, when absolutely nothing about this situation is normal. No, this entire situation is fucked. Do you know what the odds are of having stage 4 lung cancer as a non-smoking 40 year old are? Less than 0.010%. Do you know what the odds are of having sarcoma in one organ, let alone five, are at 41? One in a million, according to my oncologist. I am the outlier.

So yeah, most days all I want to do is retreat safely inside myself. Hide under layers of fluffy covers and the safety of darkness. Which is exactly what I would be doing if I had continued living by myself in Portland. There's no better form of physical retreat in my opinion. Other than sex, but it's hard to get some when you're cancer-ridden (and perceived as highly fragile, as if a single thrust would render you unfit for chemo), bald, overweight, and living with your parents in a town full of Trumpers. 

Instead of staying in Portland, my parents politely demanded I move in with them (which I knew was the right move, even if I had once declared I would NEVER live in the devil's ballsack known as Texas humidity ever again). So I got rid of most of my belongings and drove the 2000 miles so I can pleasantly die in my parents' lakehouse. 

As a manic depressive, I am well versed in hiding from my problems with sleep. Sleeping is my favorite hobby, just like Hannah Horvath. As in, I sleep on a professional level--I did before I ever got cancer, when depression was my biggest problem. There's an entire semester of college I basically slept through. I know students are far more likely to party their way to C's, but that would have required my getting out of bed. 

A week ago I had a few really bad days because I went out of town without my week's container of meds. An emergency stash in my purse provided a single dosage of backups, but I still downward spiraled for a few days even once I was back to my regularly scheduled regimen of mood stabilizer, antipsychotic, antidepressant, antianxiety, and sleeping pills.

To improve my mood, m y mother suggested I go down to the dock and write. I had been talking about this for weeks but hadn't yet, in part because my oxygen levels made it difficult to make such a long walk over bumpy inclined terrain without dragging my cumbersome "portable" oxygen machine. My body, however, was doing great after my latest hospital stay where I got two bags of blood, so I made the trek out to the dock with surprising ease. Physically I almost feel normal again, as long as I don't look in the mirror at my bandanaed head.

Writing is my emotional retreat; it has been since I started journaling in college about my depression. Over the last week of beautiful cool weather, writing out on our dock, I have done some of my best blog writing about my decade-long fight and triumph over alcoholism, since my previous blog fifteen years ago ("Best of Houston" Houston Press award winning, but long defunct, I'm sorry to say).

Normally writing things like that leaves me gutted for days, but not so this time. I suppose they were stories I needed to tell so badly, as if ridding my soul of its own version of a tumor, or maybe it's because I told them in such a healing environment. Probably both.

Writing is a contradiction in retreating. On one hand, it lets you retreat into your deepest thoughts and feelings, yet on the other hand, it brings those to the forefront and forces you to face them, at least for a little while. Which for the longest time I could only do with a glass or four of wine in my hand. 

Writing lets me say things I would never say in front of another person. Those of you who have read the two posts on my alcoholism may find this hard to believe, but yes, there are still things unsaid, at least for now. Writing honestly takes nerve, and the capacity not to delete it all the next day in the light of sobriety or my better senses. 

When it came down to it, writing saved me from myself--eventually. Once I learned to accept it as both a retreat and a step forward.

Now I know it's impossible for writing to save me from a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, but it's already done wonders in healing my soul. At this rate, when I come to the end of my life, I think I'll be able to do so with a clear heart and spirit. At least I hope so.

Patronus

Throughout my childhood, my happiest memory is of the sound of the hood of our wrought iron grill opening and hitting my windowsill. That meant Dad was grilling Lindsay sausage for Sunday breakfast, my favorite time of the week. We'd sleep late, forgo chores, talk, make each other laugh, and not rush the day like we did on Saturdays. The sausage was specially made in my father's hometown of Lindsay, Texas, in a single grocery store, and it's the best sausage I've had to this day. It's special, just like Sundays. 

If you asked me what my Patronus memory of happiness is, I would say the sound of that iron grill hitting my windowsill. 

The idea of the Patronus is taken from Harry Potter: It's your happiest memory, which you cast in the face of a Dementor to save your sense of happiness and even your soul from being sucked out of your body. It's a very difficult spell to pull off, because your happy memory has to be strong and felt with true conviction.

More recently, my happiest times are when I take my nap every afternoon and I listen to the sounds of life through my bedroom door: Mom and Dad chatting and laughing, my brother playing guitar, the slam of the microwave, the clink of the dog's tags against her water bowl, even my Dad cursing when he's on the phone with a "gotdamn fucking bitch of a machine." 

Since I now live at a lakehouse, you'd think my favorite memories would be of reading on the deck or watching sunsets every evening come over the horizon, but no, it's the everyday sounds of my family. 

These are the sounds of home, and they keep me safely guarded, at least enough for me to burrow down in my bed and go to sleep with my mind at peace.

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What is your Patronus memory?