I’ve heard mixed reviews on the hair-fall-out-timeline.  My doctor said three weeks, others have said two.  I started yanking on my hair yesterday to see if it’s loosening up.   I know that is ridiculous, and that it will just suddenly start falling out in clumps, but I feel like I have a bit more control over my body if I actually pull some hair out rather than wake up to clumps of it on my pillow.  I guess I will just start sleeping with my pink sleep cap on toward the end of this week.  Catching my detached hair in a cap is the next best thing to pulling it out myself, which is next best to just shaving it (but that’s not going to happen until it falls out!).  I found an inexpensive shop on esty that makes sleep caps and scarves for chemo/hair loss patients.  She even made an extra-large one for my extra-large head (I’m a 7 1/4, I know this from my riding helmets) for no additional cost and the shipping is free.  Pretty sweet!

I hope Bing is here when my hair shows me that the chemo is working.  It’s just one of those moments I prefer not to be alone and that I have dreaded since my diagnosis.  I feel like Bing has missed a lot of my physically tough cancer moments, and not by any fault of his, he’s the only one of us working right now.  But he didn’t see me for nearly two weeks after surgery, and saw me on the upswing from chemo at the beginning of this week.  Although I am projecting here, I wonder if it even seems like I am “sick” to him sometimes.  I guess the importance of this for me is to feel like he understands the cumulative emotional toll cancer has on me, and sometimes seeing helps with believing.

I spent much of yesterday cleaning up our storage shed and the barn, dragging our pasture, and chasing Dora, our goat, out of the feed room.  It felt so good to feel strong and normal, and to do things that I actually enjoy, believe it or not.  We moved to Steamboat in May, about three weeks before this crap started (I refuse to call cancer a “journey” since journeys sound fun, and this isn’t).  I spent many moments during those weeks appreciating my life and the twists and turns that lead me to Bing and living in a beautiful place with my horse in my backyard, things I’ve wanted my entire life.  I felt grateful and peaceful.  I told myself to enjoy those moments of perfection and feelings of grace, since the world could change in a moment, and it did.