Chemo Hair, Beware

March 1^st is going to be a fabulous day for me.  You see, today is my last day wearing bandanas on the top of my head.   Tomorrow I get highlights and a haircut meant for a girl who wants to grow her hair back long like it was before my chemo treatments.

My hairdresser, Nicole, God love her—met me after hours Tuesday to see what we have to work with.  When I took off my hat—the tears started to flow and that hat went straight back on my head.  Nicole had about a 30 second look at it.  So different from my friend, Judy, who just finished chemo and showed me her bald head right in the middle of church. 

I’m such a baby.

But in my defense, I have had long red curly hair all of my adult life.  This no hair/short hair thing is overwhelming to me.

So now I’m actually talking to my Chemo Hair.  You know, saying things like “We’re going to be fine”, “You’ll like all that goop I will have to put in you”, “You grew in so nice and thick, nothing to worry about there”, “Keep your eye on the goal and keep growing”, “Don’t worry, nobody will look at us funny, I promise”, “Yes, we can put a bandana back on, but only once in awhile”…

And I’m wondering if anybody else out there talks to their Chemo Hair.

Back to Nicole. 

So I slipped my hat back on my head with the tears flowing, and she put her arm on my shoulder and said some very comforting things I can’t remember.  And then she told me the plan, and I felt much better.  But I am quite nervous to ditch the bandana look.  Why?

I’m still thinking on that (which is why this is a two-part post), but meanwhile, I thought that maybe some of you would be interested to read my viewpoint on THE PHASES OF CHEMO HAIR.

Phase 1:  Oh, it’s not going to fall out.  They tell you that your hair may or may not fall out on the cytoxan/taxol chemo regimen.  And so after the first treatment, you’re thinking well, hey!  Maybe I’m one of the lucky ones!  Then one day you get a few more hairs in your brush than what you think is normal, but you dismiss the idea, and then all of a sudden, there’s no doubt that you are going to lose your hair because everytime you pull your hands through your hair, you get handfuls of the stuff.

Phase 2:  It’s not so bad being bald.  Then you find yourself staring at yourself in the mirror.  I mean, who has ever seen you bald as an adult, and when will THAT ever happen again?  You get really sad about not having any head hair, but the perk is that you don’t have hair anywhere, and that makes a summer of swimming suits exceptionally awesome!

Phase 3:  I’m sick of being bald.  Self explanatory.  I mean, there are only so many things you can put on your head, and you still can’t hide the fact that you are bald, or fix the fact that your head and the tips of your ears (that’s perhaps the worst part) are always COLD unless you have your head under a heat lamp.

Phase 4:  Will it ever grow back?  After chemo, there are these agonizing weeks where you wait for your hair to start coming back, and you wonder if it will.  For me, I had these gray hairs that never fell out, and was otherwise bald, so I felt like an old troll most of the time.  I never spent so much time in front of a mirror waiting for hair to grow.

Phase 5:  Baby Chick.  When I had about half an inch of soft chemo hair covering my head, I looked like a baby chick.  It stuck up perfectly straight all over, and people who knew me would stick their hand under my bandana and rub the baby chick hair.

Phase 6:  Orangutan.    When I had about 2 inches of hair covering my head, I looked like an orangutan.  Particularly when I got out of the shower—I had red hair sticking straight up in all directions.

Phase 7:  Chemo Hair, Beware.  This is when you start thinking you need to ditch the head gear, and show off your new hair.  And then other people start asking you the same thing.  You and your chemo hair cringe with the question, because change is inevitable, and the comfort of the bandana must go.  Can cause mixed feelings in some rather high strung red-heads.

I’ll let you know how tomorrow goes.