7.11.2018

Hairy Journey

Back in the day I used to love watching the show What Not to Wear.  I hated the part where the person got ridiculed for their wardrobe and overall appearance, but I loved the endings where the transformations happened.  I always thought the biggest change came with the hair though.  I would always say, "Hair makes or breaks a person!"  I still think hair has a lot to do with one's appearance.  P.S. Clinton Kelly is my spirit animal and I want to be friends with him.



In the last year my hair has gone through a roller coaster ride!  Let's take a look at what my hair USED to look like, back before any chemo entered my life.


For as long as I can remember, with the exception of a short stint in high school, I have ALWAYS had bangs, and usually swept to the side in my adult years. I've also always had straighter hair with a touch of a wave, but nothing a quick swipe of the straightener didn't fix.  I never colored my hair  (also except for a few times in high school), and in recent years my hair was never really past my shoulders.  

When chemo entered my life, I knew I would lose my hair.  When I started losing my hair and before it thinned out too much, I had Eric shave it off.  Looking back that was definitely a control move.  "I'm not going to let you dictate when I lose my hair, I'll shave it all off!  How do you like that?!"  It was kind of like the person who quits their job just before they're about to get fired.  My last chemo session was in early June, but the effects still ran their course through June and July.  It wasn't until August that I started getting any real hair back.  

I was warned that my hair may grow back curly.  When it first started coming in I thought, oh it's still straight, no biggie.  But towards November and December as it grew more, I did notice the curls.  People would see me and ask if I had curly hair before.  Nope!  My favorite was my oncologist asking if he did that to me or if it was always curly.  

I enjoyed the curls!  It was kind of fun having something new that I had never had before.  I had to learn how to take care of the curls and it gave me a sense of...wildness.  I always admired women with curly hair and they always seemed like they had this wild spirit inside of them.  I think it's beautiful!

But alas, that was not the permanent ending for me.  Around April I noticed my hair growing straight at the roots again.  So as I was trying to grow my hair longer, it was just looking like a really bad curly mullet and I couldn't help but feel a striking resemblance to A.C Slater.  Sometimes I would even sit on a chair backwards to get the full effect.

Those dimples, though.
I kept hemming and hawing over what to do and if I should get my hair cut or just let it keep growing.  It also didn't help that my stylist I'd been seeing for years wasn't cutting hair any more, so I had nobody reliable to go to.  Then a few weeks ago I was at Julia's swim class, and quite impulsively called a salon near my house and asked if they had room for me that same day.  They did.  So I went.  My stylist explained that it looked funny because the body of the hair should be at the roots, but my hair was straight, then body at the ends.  She straightened it with a brush and hair dryer to get rid of the curl, and the cut made my hair look intentional.  While I loved how she styled it, the problem lay in the fact that I am not an octopus and couldn't recreate what she had done.  Also, the humidity lately didn't help the curl factor.

So off I went again a few weeks later.  I asked if she could just cut the ends off, eliminating all of the curls.  She complied and I ended up with much shorter hair than I would had I left it alone.  However, it feels SO GOOD to finally have what I feel is MY HAIR back.  I feel like me again!  The curls were fun, but it felt like I was trying something on that didn't belong to me.  It feels good to be back.  

Here is a visual progression of the past year:


And, the before chemo vs. current situation side by side (of course, both in Cubs gear):


It's pretty remarkable how hair (or lack there of) has had an effect on how I feel and my self-image.  I honestly didn't feel self-conscious when I was bald, but more so these last few weeks when my hair was behaving like an awkward 12 year old.  People also ask me why hair comes back curly after chemo, as it occurs 90% of the time.  I did some research, and the answer is: nobody knows.  One article I read said that not many studies have gone into it because they'd rather spend the time and money figuring out a cure and better treatments for cancer.  I can get behind that.