Beauty For Ashes: November 2007

Thursday, November 15, 2007

ANATOMY OF A HAIR DO, Part II

It annoys me so much when my pictures disappear into cyberspace. I'm nothing if not persistent!

Here is my attempt at keeping things NORMAL by cutting my hair very short after it started to all out. (You can see it was a vain attempt) This DO lasted less than a week. I had already lost so much that the receding hairline is glaringly obvious.

Here are M (she's 6 here) and I looking freaked out about the upcoming shaved head!! (M at age 4 is the photographer)

Somehow I felt compelled to blog about the hair loss. This getting a new and almost normal hair do is a big deal for someone who spent several months totally bald and several more with miniscule hair growth.

Breast cancer strikes at the heart of all that is feminine. (although my plastic surgeon is AWESOME -- the new one looks better than the other, though he has been obsessed with giving me a matching pair. LOL!) No pictures of that here!! First there's the loss of a breast (or two as the case may be) and then the treatment. The side effects of the treatment are almost worse. One can hide the initial effects of a mastectomy and the beginning of reconstruction. One cannot hide a bald head so well. The wig does a reasonable job...but it doesn't feel REAL!

All the while, I recognized that the illness, the nausea, the neuropathy, the hair loss were necessary evils, although I cracked my share of jokes that some day we'll look at chemotherapy treatment for cancer the way we view leeches for fever now! At this time, improving the odds of a long life was more important. Still, the hair really bothered me.

That sort of startled look that of have in the photo with M is how I felt the entire time.

Finally, I feel real. The new hairdo has done that for me. (Although the bangs in front are still too short -- another few weeks!) But I'm REAL!

Pastor Phylis

THE ANATOMY OF A HAIR DO

THis is from a picture of me with Victor, Marta and Sammy before the liver transplant -- December 2005. This is what my hair had been like for several years.

Last October, chemo effects began. Exactly three weeks after the first infusion, my hair began to fall out.

After a few days of clumps of hair on the pillow in the morning, I went and got a very short haircut. It was an attempt to stave off the inevitiable just a little bit longer. (That picture disappeared into cyberspace) And then one evening, even more fell out all at once and I was left with this.

So Brad and the girls came over for him to shave my head.

M and I are both apprehensive about this head shaving to come!! (the 4 year old is the photographer here!)

Brad finished the job by shaving my head. Both girls helped -- taking pictures and movies (the 6 year old took this one) You can see M's sad face. I had him leave the bangs and a fringe in back that still hung on. For about a week I could wear a hat and it wasn't terribly obvious that I was bald. Howevever that hair, too, soon fell out. And then I donned this wig. Occasionally I'd wear a hat or scarf or both, but most of the time I wore this wig. I'd though about getting a funky one for fun, but somehow when it's necessity, the fun is gone and I just wanted to look NORMAL.

By summer, I was tired of the wig and just started wearing it short -- I really didn't like the short in front stuff. But...it was better than sweating in the wig.

It's been growing since March and by the end of October, it was very shaggy!!

It had gotten so shaggy and long. I liked the feel of the longer hair, but it was getting unmanageable because it was short on the sides, long in back, longer on the right side -- kind of a lop-sided mullet. It's still very curly...this was taken blow dried. I've been wearing it curly, but now it's too long.

Progress,

Pastor Phylis