Hair
These days when I’m watching TV sometimes all I see is hair and eyebrows. I have hair and eyebrow envy!
You seriously never realize how much you’re attached to your eyebrows until you loose them.
…As I continue to step merrily into this story in an utterly backwards fashion…. I will briefly fill you in with a bit of background to all this:
My story with cancer began in December 2010, and with my particular kind of breast cancer (yes, there are different kinds… more on this later), the treatment starts with chemo first (rather than surgery)–it’s called neo-adjuvant chemo. So I basically started chemo 2 weeks after being diagnosed — and exactly one day before moving apartments! — in the week right between Christmas and New Year’s. Par-tay.
So… not much of an advanced warning for the chemo or to prepare for loosing my hair. Also it was freakin’ January so there was no way I was going to go and shave it all off preemptively as some people do.
Anyway, one thing I told myself and repeated to my family too at the time in preparation for loosing my hair was my realization that all these years, when I’d see cancer patients I’d always associate the bald head with the illness. As if the baldness was a symptom of being sick. But now, in undergoing treatment and learning about chemo, I realized that the hair-loss is just a by-product of the treatment. It’s really simple: cancer cells duplicate at an uncontrolled rate, so chemo is a way of stopping fast-growing and multiplying cells. It’s a systemic treatment, so it’s not going to only grab the fast growing cancer cells, it also knocks out the other fast growing (good) cells in the body — e.g. the things that our bodies regenerate quickly: like hair and our stomach lining (hence the nausea problems too). Anyway, realizing this kind of helped me with the hair thing.
In the end actually, my hair took awhile to go. It was only really noticeably missing after about 4 months into my chemo. This was because the first kind of chemo I was on wasn’t really the hair knock-out kind as much as the new one I’m on now (different kinds of chemo have different side effects).
It’s weird but hair can become a strange kind of commodity when you’re in treatment. Sometimes it can feel as if you have to be bald to be considered a “real” cancer patient, (haha… oh humans… yes, we really are capable of making *anything* into a hierarchy).
I was happy to not loose mine all right away, but that the same time in treatmentland it meant that it was more difficult to get people to believe I was actually a patient — even at the hospital, with volunteers or even other patients. Some friends who are on a pill form of chemo have said they have a similar experience because it doesn’t knock your hair out as much either. Being young doesn’t help either because people just assume you’re someone’s caregiver. But as my brother said “Well, look at it as a sign that you are looking good and healthy!”. So I’ve tried to view it that way rather than go all postal on well-meaning volunteers. 🙂
But you know, it’s so important to keep things in perspective. Loosing your hair really is a small price to pay for effective treatment. Like so many things in life there is always the possibility to take a certain situation and spin it — either to make it worse than it actually is, or even though the situation actually really does f*cking bite the big one, to play around a bit and spin it into something that’s a little more manageable mentally & emotionally.
So I’ve been playing around with different ways of thinking about the hair thing. That maybe I’m just going through a bit of a spy phase right now like Jennifer Garner… when I decide to wear a wig (or not).
Or as a very good friend pointed out, I can think of other eyebrow-less ladies, like Miss Jean Harlow…. the lady even looks like she’s rocking the chemo-turban in this one (with the fur-coat trying to over-compensate for the lack of “poil” elsewhere…hehheh).
All I can say is that when this is over and done I’m going to grow my hair back as long as it will go and enjoy each additional inch as I have never done before.
c is for celeritas 
I used to have eyebrow envy also, not so much after the first time I had cancer as the chemo didn’t really do much more the thin my hair out. So I still had eyebrows. But when I relapse and had to go through the high dose chemo for my bone marrow transplant I lost every thing and I mean everything not even eyelashes or nose hair. It all went from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes. I didn’t miss any of the hair except for the eyebrows. The other stuff that went was easily hidden with a hat and long sieves and pants but it was the lack of eyebrows that made me feel so alien. As a guy I could not draw them in as it wiuld just look strange. Not like I didn’t look strange to begin with yellow skin and not a stitch of hair to be found lol it’s funny to think about now 2 years later, not so funny at the time as I’m sure you know now. Have you tried to draw them in at all? Any how I just wanted to comment let you know don’t feel alon about it it’s common to loose it all just think of it as your warrior uniform 🙂
Thinking about you and sending you good healing thoughts daily!!!!!
Neil, you’re so freakin’ awesome. Thanks for that!
And yah, a friend recommend an awesome little eyebrow kit. I had never been a make-up person, but now I’m a pro with the eyebrows! 🙂
The idea of a warrior uniform is awesome. Yah, I sometimes think that way. I’m a little spy on a mission. It’s alright.
My eyelashes seem to be coming back, which is nice. I missed them too, if only for practical purposes.
I found the most annoying was the nose hair you don’t realize how much that stuff stops you from having a runny nose all the time. So it was not as obvious as the eyebrows but heck it sucked. I meant to also say I still have vein envy in fact it’s kind of weird but I am always checking out people’s veins on the subway or street. My veins are a mess still. I also on occasion still loose all my hair from time to time it’s a common long term side effect so when that happens my eyebrow envy returnswith a vengeance 😉 obviously it’s all in a playful kind of way
Haha. Yah, I never thought I’d be checking out people’s eyebrows. Yes, nosehair, eyelashes and eyebrows all serve very useful purposes. I had some seriously sore eyes from having shampoo run right into them!
It’s pretty funny to think “Oh, she’s so lucky, she’s one of those eyebrow people”. 🙂
Tundra,
I had to laugh. Yes, I remember losing my hair, as well. I wasn’t prepared for how fast it was going to happen, and it totally upset me. Totally was the last straw in my attempt to cope, emotionally…and I lost it. To me, it was the mark of the “poor cancer patient,” and I did not want to wear that badge. To have people look at me and cluck their tongues and think, “Poor thing.”
I got over it.
As for eyebrows, my cousin sent me temporary, stick-on eyebrow tattoos. Want some? If I still have them, I’ll send them to you! 🙂
And finally, as for eyebrow envy…my real experience with noticing what others had that I no longer had came after my mastectomy. I found myself looking at women on TV in glamorous gowns and cleavage-showing tank tops and thinking: “You’re lucky. You take having two breasts for granted”.
It doesn’t hit me so hard, any more. I may sometimes notice someone on TV and have a fleeting thought about how fleeting having breasts can be, as a human experience. But the sense of loss doesn’t linger like it used to. Funny how you get used to not having something like that.
Brenda
Thanks 🙂
Thanks for the offer too for the eyebrows. 🙂 I’ve actually found a really good “kit” for them that works well.
You are totally right about it being hard to convince people that you are a cancer patient when you still have hair, as you know I am on a pill form of chemo and people ask me all the time if I am going to lose my hair or how come I haven’t… Even though I am a stage IV GIST patient I sometimes get the feeling that I am a ‘poser’ in the cancer world and that what I have isn’t that big a deal so I don’t talk about it – – (other than to my husband) EVER, but it is a big deal and I have just been trying to ignore it and all the feelings, emotions and fears that come with it for way too long now.
Yup, I had been thinking of you (and another friend) when I wrote about the pill-form chemo. I think the fact of being young too can make you feel like a “poser” because most people–even other patients, and sometimes even health-care staff–are under the mistaken impression that young people only get “easy” cancers, e.g. stage 1, etc. and that it’s “easier” when you’re young because you’re healthy and strong.
But of course, the stats show that cancer is different in young adults — and is usually more aggressive, AND is often misdiagnosed and/or diagnosed at a later stage.
If I could I would share my hair with you, I don’t have much in the way of eyebrows to begin with but I’d share those too 🙂 (my grandmother never had cancer and she had no eyebrows and very few eyelashes she was just made that way *wink*)
Awwwe, you’re too sweet! 🙂
Well, it seems lately that my eyelashes & eyebrows are coming back a bit.
And apparently after I have my last treatment in a couple of weeks then my hair should start coming back sometime after that… into what the nurse called a “cute haircut”. 🙂
Three years later I still have eyebrow envy. Mine returned, but not to their full, dark pre-chemo state. Maybe it is not so much envy as heightened attention to eyebrows. I notice who has their brows shaped and who was blessed with great natural shape. I get particularly distracted by my sister who still has the eyebrows I once had. I now have mine shaped. Unfortunately, I am not very good at upkeep…