I Have a Week Left With My Hair.
I Have a Week Left With My Hair.
And probably 4 months left with my breasts.
I’m 38 years old and my body doesn’t deserve this. I can’t stop crying thinking about the way I’ll lose parts of my identity.
When I see videos of hair styling in my Instagram feed or the blow dryer in a drawer in my bathroom I quickly look away and tear up. My hair won’t be here next week. It will take a few weeks to fully fall out and then months to grow back in. Years and years to be as long as it is now.
I have really good hair.
A friend called it ‘newscaster hair’. I hope I have a good shaped bald head. I hope I don’t lose all my eyebrow hairs. I hope my daughters aren’t afraid when they see me bald and looking sick even though we have assured them again and again and again that I will be okay.
When the radiologist was looking at my non-cancerous right breast on my ultrasound she said ‘you’ll worry about this one and have to check it every 6 months. I’d just lose them both’. Everyone says that. ‘Just get rid of them.’ ‘Take it all off’. ‘That’s what I would do.’ So casually. With so much assurance. As if it’s the easiest choice.
I’ll be chemo sick six times in a row.
Fighting fatigue and body aches, a lack of tastebuds that makes eating a chore. Never really feeling like food is sitting well in my body and wishing desperately to go to the gym or get a massage or have a glass of wine with a friend. While mourning the loss of the life I was living less than one month ago. And googling the possible ways to recreate a human breast. With other parts of my body? With mesh and saline and multiple surgeries? Did you know nipples can be recreated with tattoos because they’re not always salvageable? Did you know you often lose some or all sensation in your breasts and they never feel like the same part of your body again? I’m learning about it all because I have to.
My heart breaks for my body and its wholeness and my naive understanding of cancer. I’m so squeamish about needles I’ve almost passed out during basic blood draws. Now I have a device sewn into my chest for the needles to pop into where they pump a medicine that will both make me feel terrible and save my life. I’d never had anesthesia before and now I’ll have multiple surgeries in a year. I am so so sad, and also so so thankful. This is going to give me a long life, but it won’t be the same one I was living before.
I talk to other women in treatment or who have gone through this. We immediately become friends, allies, sources of hope and comfort and knowledge. We all say the same thing ‘I’m so sorry you’re going through this.’ Or ‘I’m so glad to hear you’re doing well’. I know I’m going to make it to that other side, and they assure me I can get there, but today it doesn’t seem possible.
I regularly share my outfits, bargain finds and investments on my Instagram. Follow along here if you’d like to see more! And never hesitate to DM me with a question or if you’re on the hunt for something, the only thing I love more than shopping for myself is shopping for someone else!
