Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So, it's been Side-Effect City at the Cake Eater Pad lately.

Since my first chemo treatment, almost three weeks ago, I've experienced everything from joint pain and swelling to bone and muscle pain to nausea to fatigue to a complete and utter five-day loss of appetite. It's been an adventure---and I use that as a euphemism, in case you weren't familiar with my particular brand of sarcasm---waking up every morning and wondering what it's going to be today. Because it will be something new and usual. You're assured of it. Fortunately, however, the side-effects are temporary, and most of the ickiness is over with by the fifth day, when most of the drugs are out of your system. Then you have to deal with recovering from the chemo, because it demands you take a few days off to recover from it. It's sort of like when you know you're done with the flu, but you're weak and ineffectual as a human being because your body needs time to recover. That lasted for four days in my case. Then I felt fine. My energy surged to pre-chemo levels this past Monday and I've felt like a rock star ever since. Last week I did all of the laundry by myself for the first time since my surgery, at the end of February. I managed to get the house cleaned up, except for the vacuuming, which the husband graciously agreed to do, because I'm still afraid I'll rip my innards to shreds if I push the floor sucker around the Cake Eater pad. I'm thinking about my spring planting and am starting to plan that out. I even manged to rip George Tenet a new one. I'm feeling pretty good right about now, and I really like it. I want it to stay that way, too. I like feeling good, because when you spend, literally, months not feeling good, or even normal, well, you treasure the time you feel well. It's cliched beyond all belief, but it's the truth. Everything feels better now. It really does. Food smells and tastes better. My evening glass of wine is a joy to imbibe. Spring is springing and I'm enjoying it even more this year than in years past. It's a rebirth not only for Mother Nature, but for myself as well. Life feels pretty damn good right now. Because I'm feeling good. Yet, my attitude might change by the end of the week. Barring any complications in the meantime, I have my next treatment scheduled for this Friday.

But that's in the future.

There's just one thing, though. Just one side-effect of the chemo that's still happening. Think you can guess what it is, my devoted Cake Eater readers? You can? Ok, good. Give it your best shot! YES. That's right. It's {insert drumroll here} hair loss!

Woo-freakin'-hoo, people!

It started, roughly, a little over a week ago, when I noticed I didn't have to shave the 1,023 square inches that comprise the surface area of my legs every day. It was every other day. Same with the armpits. Then, last Monday, twelve days out from my first treatment, my hair started coming out. Now, my devoted Cake Eater readers, when I have hair, I have a serious head of hair. It's thick. It's curly. It's long. And, for the most part, it's a pain in the ass. I whine as much about it as I possibly can. Because I can. I have a tempestuous relationship with my hair. I always have. It's Petruchio and I'm Kate. It's a love-hate relationship if there ever was one. Yet, it is also, quite seriously, my best feature. It makes or breaks my appearance. If it's out of control and frizzed out, creating what the husband calls "The Halo Effect," where all the broken ends rise towards the heavens, creating a halo of frizz that can be seen when I'm backlit, well, I look like hell. If, however, it's under control---easily achieved in January, when there's little to no humidity---I look pretty damn good. It is my crowing glory---to use an trite phrase to drive the point home.

I knew this was coming. My hair was going to fall out and I was going to be bald. Hair loss is a side-effect of both the carboplatin and the taxol I receive in my treatments. It was going to happen. I knew it was. I just wish it hadn't started to fall out when I felt so good. But, perhaps, there's a reason for that. Perhaps it's a built-in period of time to reestablish your good will towards life so you can deal with the fact that your hair has lost its will to be attached to your scalp, and any privacy you might have had regarding your diagnosis is shot to hell. Now, suddenly, everyone and their mother knows you have cancer. Or, in my case, had cancer. Because people know now. There's no getting around it. You look different than everyone else, so they notice the incongruity you represent---you're the one thing that's not like the other---and they look at you. They look hard. I have to say, my devoted Cake Eater readers, the accompanying reactions are interesting. Because if they're looking at me, well, I'm looking just as hard at them.

That said, I'm not bald just yet. That'll happen tonight because my head has suddenly turned into Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, and is shedding at every opportunity. If only it made that neat tinkling sound every time it shed, I'd have it made. I had to cut it short the other day because the hair loss was too unruly, too out-of-control. Go figure that my out-of-control hair would be out-of-control when it started to fall out.

They tell you that the best way to minimize the trauma of hair loss is to take it down to the scalp when it starts falling out. Otherwise, you just have to wait for it to do it's business. And it's a messy business. Particularly when your hair is long, because it comes out root to tip---and if your hair is over a foot long, well, my devoted Cake Eater readers, it looks like Chewbacca's been spending some time in your bathroom. Dr. Fuzzy Sweater told me to cut it short beforehand, so that it didn't create as much of a mess when it did fall out. I blatantly ignored this piece of advice. Fuck that, I thought. I'd had so much taken away from me, in such a short period of time, and I hadn't been ready for it. When my hair went, I decided, it was going to go on my terms---not anyone else's. I know it may seem a little whacko, but so much of what happens to you as a cancer patient is determined by other people---your doctors, your nurses, their schedulers, the lab technicians, and even the side-effects of the drugs you're on control you, as well. Cancer is like riding a roller coaster at an amusement park: you show up for the ride, but everyone else is in control---and all you can do, or are required to do, is hang on for dear life and scream at the appropriate times. So, when you can exert control over something, well, you grab the bull by the horns and you go for a ride.

So I did. It involved a barbershop, a pair of clippers and a willing barber. While I personally think the Marines would be happy with my hair as it is right now, the husband tells me it's not high and tight enough. What the hell, I wonder, would qualify? My hair is now less than an inch long in most places. This means, in the scheme of things, that I left, roughly, eleven or twelve inches of very thick, brown and blonde, curly, color-treated hair on the floor of the husband's barber's shop last Thursday. Don, bless him, had agreed to be my back-up a week before. The husband had offered to shear me. He has a set of clippers and I'm sure he would have done a fine job. I, however, wanted him to have a back-up in case he felt uncomfortable with the idea of it as the time came closer. When it came down to it, he felt Don would do a better job, so we got a last minute appointment, walked down to his shop and sat down for a shearing.

It was bizarre to be clipped, I have to say. I know that my devoted male Cake Eater readers probably deal with the buzzing every two weeks or so, but it was my first time and man, did, it feel weird. This vibrating thing was running along my scalp, cutting my hair as quickly as it's ever been cut, and long locks of hair it had taken me years to grow were falling to the floor as quickly as Don could move the clippers. The thought crossed my mind that someone had to invent this thing. How on earth did they come up with the idea that this vibrating thing would be the best way to cut hair? The most efficient way to cut hair? How did they think this up? I had no idea then, and I still haven't a clue. But, before I knew it, all the hair was gone. Don hadn't taken me down to the scalp. I hadn't mentioned that to him, so that was fine, because everyone in the shop was telling me how cute I looked with my hair this short. I didn't know what to say because I didn't have my glasses on. When I saw myself, I gasped a little bit, surprised at just how short it was.

And then Don made me laugh by telling me I looked just like a lesbian.

Because I do look like a lesbian now. And he's not the only one who's told me so. My brother called me the next day, after seeing the photo the husband had lightly bullied me into posing for and then emailed out, and he said the same thing. My hair is short. And it is cute, in a pixie-ish sort of way. It's soft if you run your hands down it; if you run your hands up it, well, it feels like a brush you'd pull out of your shoeshine box to polish your nicest pair of John Lobb Cordovan wingtips.

But it's still falling out.

It's just doing so in a more manageable way. I'm not clogging the drain now. Any long, brown hairs that are on the floor now are the husband's, not mine. My head gets cold, so I wear hats and do-rags when I go out---and to hide the fact that it's getting a little thin in spots. It's interesting, watching people watch me. Because, like I wrote up there, lo those many paragraphs ago, I can't hide it anymore. If you're wearing a hat or a do-rag, and your hair is as short as mine is, and your eyebrows are thinning out, like mine are, well, the chances you're a cancer patient are pretty good. (Although, I know some women who would pay really good money to have their eyebrows shaped like mine are now.) People look at you. They can't help it. They just do. What's interesting is how they respond to your cancer-ridden (or not) presence. I've devised a series of categories to place them in, because it's amazing how many of the responses are the same.

Ahem.

• First off you have the I'M NOT LOOKING AT YOU People. Theyr'e not looking at you. No, they're not. You just thought they were looking at you. They'll swear on a stack of bibles that they're not looking at you. You're wrong. Their pupils are firmly set directly in the middle of their sockets, they're looking directly ahead, and NO they did not SEE YOU. They'd swear they didn't. And if they did just for one fraction of a second, well, they didn't mean to see you. They really didn't. It was an accident and it will never happen again! EXCEPT THAT THEY JUST DID! AIEEEEEE! Oh, Holy Hell! Their eye slipped over to the corner and...they forced it by sheer will back to center. OHMYGODDIDTHEYNOTICE??? I DON'T WANT TO MAKE THEM FEEL LIKE THEY'RE IN A FREAK SHOW! I CAN'T LOOK! REALLY, I CAN'T. LOOK AT THE GROUND LOOK AT THE GROUND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST LOOK AT THE GROUND!!!!

  These are the people who pick up the pace and get by you really quickly.

• Second, you have the Smiley People. They're the ones who notice you, and make sure you notice them noticing you, then they break out in a big smile, to show you that you shouldn't feel awkward in their presence because---ahem---they understand.

  While their sincerity is sometimes hard to judge in an instant, I'm not knocking the Smiley People. They're the nice ones. You run into a lot of them when you take the shortcut to the oncologist's office through the hospital.

• Third, you have the No, My Mother Never Told Me It Was Rude to Stare. Why Do You Ask? People. They stare. They don't hide that they're staring at you. If you're a moving target, they will move with you to make sure their view of you stays unimpeded. Sometimes their jaws drop. Most of the time they manage to hide their Cro-Magnon Man instincts, however, and fit in with other Homo Sapiens and manage to just come off as incredibly rude.
• Fourth, and finally, we have the There, But For the Grace of God, Go I People. They're an interesting species. They notice you and they have a visceral reaction to you. It's not one that's meant to shun you or make you feel badly, it's just that you really don't matter. You're instantly out of the equation. Your covered head is simply the catalyst for them to think about how they would deal with the disease. You can see it play out on their faces. They're not sad that you have cancer; they're suddenly and abruptly sad because, one day, they might get it. And, judging by the reactions, their world will end if they do.

That it's so far. I might come up with new categories, we'll just have to see what happens. Oh, and I should mention there are plenty of people who look, but just look away, too. Then they just go about their business, like they would have before you wrapped your head up in a bandana. But they're hardly the majority. On the whole, however, it's been an excellent people watching experience.

And I'm not even bald yet. We'll have to see what happens tomorrow.

{Insert wiggling of thinning eyebrows here}

Posted by Kathy at May 7, 2007 05:59 PM | TrackBack