Sunday, October 11, 2009

They say I could have been brain dead in a wheelchair, but I'm standing in the booth and the skills are still here

Now that my hair is growing back and doesn't seem to be going anywhere, I thought I'd chronical my hair through chemo.

First up, some examples of my pre-chemo hair:
















I'm the one sitting on the couch on the right.  Doesn't my hair look curly and shiny here? 

And here my hair is looking particularly cute during a night of roller skating:

Again, I'm on the right here.  God, hair, you are so cute and perky here.  It's like you knew that disco skate night was the night to rock out.

And then I started chemo, and, after 15 days, the hair started to fall out, as exemplified here:



Ew.  Having your hair fall out in chunks like that is pretty unnerving.  Like a horror movie or something. So, we cut my hair quite short.


We listened to Girl Talk and I sang and danced a lot.


The cat judged.  (BTW, we are in the process of renovating the bathroom, so it looks pretty depressing in these pictures.)


Here I am, still dancing around with the finished product.

So, the short hair lasted roughly twelve hours before I started going bald right in the front.  After about 3 days, my hair had finished falling out, and I looked like this:


This picture looks like a Glamour Shot, right?  It's only because Don is like 12 feet tall.  Also, don't I look like a little baby bird here?  We referred to my hair during this period as my "pricklesoft," as it was both prickly and soft.  Bet you couldn't have guessed that on your own.

At the end of every cycle, I'd lose a bit more hair and it seemed like any remaining hair was white.  Here I am, at last docetaxel infusion looking especially bald.



I'm trying to look punkrock in this pic, and if you look really closely, you can see my chemohawk.  You can also see some of the changes in my weight and skin texture in this picture. 
 
By the time I started my first round of AC, my hair had started to grow back.  Initially, it was just those little white strands.  (It's really common for hair to grow back white at first.) However, I'm starting to get a nice layer of regular colored hair.  When I shaved my head this morning, the clippings were pretty prototypically salt and pepper.  So, here is my current hair, on day 10 after my 2nd AC cycle (6th total cycle).




And a little more hair-centric:



It's comparatively lush, right?  And I can't call it a pricklesoft anymore, because it's just soft.  I'm pretty curious to see if it keeps growing back, or if my awesome Halloween costume will be realized.  I'm sure that I'll post more pics either way.

And to end, here is a cute picture of Cancer Puppy (also known as Beulah):



6 comments:

  1. I try! I did hats for a while, but I felt more conspicuous in them than I do with the bald head. I feel like my baldness gives me a touch of badassery, which I like.

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  2. Yes, nothing says "I have cancer" than a scarf or hat on a person ALL the time. With the bald head, you look badass AND scary! I'm afraid right now.

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  3. Exactly. And with the hat/scarf, I always felt like people were kind of thinking I had cancer but not really sure. With a bald head, I either have cancer, or I'm hardcore. Either interpretation is okay with me.

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  4. Stay strong! Rock that sexy head, girl!!

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