So, I have missed telling everyone about numerous cancer steps, but I figure I will start catch-up with this little tidbit of (recent) information.  I will work backwards, I promise!

At two weeks following my first chemotherapy, my hair started to fall out.  It was just a little bit at a time.  A few hairs in my fingers when I ran my hand through my hair.  Progressively, daily, it became worse. What was once three hairs in my hand turned to ten, then maybe fifteen or twenty.  I spent the first few showers after I realized that my hair was falling out crying, but eventually I began laughing at the amount of hair that was in the drain.  I didn’t understand how there was any hair left on my head!   I was amazed that there was SO MUCH hair in the drain, and yet I could still walk around and function in public like nothing was wrong my hair.

Yuck.  This was mid-way through the falling-out week.  I shed this much every time I ran my hand through my hair.  Whenever I was outside and it was windy, I worried that hair was just flying off my head.

That feeling lasted until exactly three weeks post-chemo round one.  I took a shower that morning, and the drain had twice as much hair as normal.  I got out of the shower and looked at myself in the mirror and realized that my hair most closely resembled that of my Uncle Cliff, with my new receding hairline and thinning hair.  Bing had received a mouthful of my hair the night before when he leaned in to kiss me.  I told Bing it was time and he told me to make sure the shaver was plugged in.  He knew.  We went outside, I sat down in a patio chair, and Bing shaved my head, standing above me in his navy robe and drinking a coffee.  Shaving my head wasn’t traumatizing.  The hair-falling-out part was.  After my shave, I threw my wig on and ran out the door to audit a riding clinic for the day.  I felt so much more like me and so much less worried, the shave was really quite liberating.

You know it’s time to shave your head when…

My willing head shaver:

Needless to say, now I am attempting to make my bald head look presentatable, should it need be.  I cannot, for the life of me, do a good head shave.  Hell, I have been shaving my legs for what? 20 years? and I still miss spots!  How am I going to conquer the head shave???  Bing’s (bald) friend says the trick is to shave it all the time, like, every few days.  I may have to try this tactic.