ANATOMY OF A HAIR DO, Part II

It annoys me so much when my pictures disappear into cyberspace. I'm nothing if not persistent!

Here is my attempt at keeping things NORMAL by cutting my hair very short after it started to all out. (You can see it was a vain attempt) This DO lasted less than a week. I had already lost so much that the receding hairline is glaringly obvious.





Here are M (she's 6 here) and I looking freaked out about the upcoming shaved head!! (M at age 4 is the photographer)




Somehow I felt compelled to blog about the hair loss. This getting a new and almost normal hair do is a big deal for someone who spent several months totally bald and several more with miniscule hair growth.

Breast cancer strikes at the heart of all that is feminine. (although my plastic surgeon is AWESOME -- the new one looks better than the other, though he has been obsessed with giving me a matching pair. LOL!) No pictures of that here!! First there's the loss of a breast (or two as the case may be) and then the treatment. The side effects of the treatment are almost worse. One can hide the initial effects of a mastectomy and the beginning of reconstruction. One cannot hide a bald head so well. The wig does a reasonable job...but it doesn't feel REAL!

All the while, I recognized that the illness, the nausea, the neuropathy, the hair loss were necessary evils, although I cracked my share of jokes that some day we'll look at chemotherapy treatment for cancer the way we view leeches for fever now! At this time, improving the odds of a long life was more important. Still, the hair really bothered me.

That sort of startled look that of have in the photo with M is how I felt the entire time.

Finally, I feel real. The new hairdo has done that for me. (Although the bangs in front are still too short -- another few weeks!) But I'm REAL!