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.