It Will Grow Back
The most appalling discovery for me upon learning that I had “the worst” subtype of stage two breast cancer was that my primary treatment method would be chemotherapy. Not just any chemo, a really old fashioned nasty type of chemo. The type that movies love to sensationalize because of the severe and disgusting side effects. The kind that poisons you so badly that your urine turns red, your taste buds burn out, your stomach lining is scorched, and of course, your hair falls out.
I loved my hair. It was perfect. Long and thick, with a texture that could be easily worn wavy or straight.
Chemotherapy would kill it at the root.
“It will grow back,” my oncologist said to me. She was a seasoned doctor. A professional on the brink of retirement. A scientist. She delivered this news mundanely, as if we had been discussing mowing my lawn. She had probably seen this cancer kill hundreds of women during the course of her career. Given what cancer had the potential to take, she saw my hair as a renewable resource. If she could save the body, the hair would follow.
Her hair was also short.
I tried very hard to save my hair but I still lost quite a bit. I was never completely bald as I feared, the hallmark of a beaten down cancer patient, but I lost a devastating amount of hair. Fellow patients and survivors had warned me to discard the shedding hairs quickly, but for some reason, I kept them.
That’s right. I have a plastic Ziploc bag of my hair that fell out from chemotherapy. Just stored casually and tragically in my bathroom closet next to the hairspray and dry shampoo.
If you didn’t know better, you might mistake it for a rotting animal carcass.
I can’t seem to throw it away and psychologists probably have a lot to say about this type of behavior. Perhaps it had been too traumatic to let it go - again. Perhaps it had been an attempt to hold on to my old self, someone I had not been ready to let go of. Perhaps I wanted my kids to know what my hair had been like if I died and they could no longer remember.
When chemotherapy finally ended and my hair stopped falling out aggressively, I got hair extensions. I knew I needed some faux hair for my mental health to get me through my most bald and wrecked looking times. Unfortunately, the outcome of hair extensions was not the lush Instagram-worthy hair I built up in my mind. My hopes for a mental health recovery dwindled quickly.
I imagine that hair extensions work very well on a person not growing his or her hair from the very root. I put up with them for about nine months until I reached the point where I felt I had to cut my hair. The hair that had grown in was thick and looked really strange with the sad strands that managed to hang on through chemotherapy.
I have always been a “long hair” girl. I like a pony tail or a bun. I like my hair off of my face when I am out on a run. It’s a part of me that I identify with strongly and one of the few things I have always managed to like about myself, even in the deep self-loathing stages of my life.
It was excruciatingly painful to cut my hair short more than a year after my cancer diagnosis and close to a year after finishing chemotherapy. Every time I tried to make my hair resemble my former self, I ended up frustrated, angry, and sad.
I was already so hollow.
I desperately wanted to move on. And yet, with twelve inches of hair still missing from my head, my tangle with cancer was still holding me back. Two years ago I was a beautiful, strong, confident, new mom of three. But that woman slipped away. At some point, I trained myself to avoid mirrors. I started to look away when I no longer recognized the gaunt figure looking back.
Now, a year-ish out of chemo, I have hair that many have mistaken for a haircut. It’s the kind of haircut you might imagine on a middle aged white woman lawyer or politician. A short haircut to show the (somehow still) male-dominated legal profession that she cares more about billing hours than holding onto herself. The person who pays with three coupons and a check at a TJ Maxx. The person who complains that Subway sandwiches don’t feel like “eating fresh.” The person who wants separate checks at brunch.
“Short hair is fine.” People will say. “I cut my hair short once.” So many women have told me. Choices are another matter. Identity is the issue here. My hair is short and I despise it. I had a life altering disease not a epiphany after browsing Cosmopolitan’s fall issue.
People love to say to me, “but you’re HEALTHY.” Big groan! Big! Huge!
Yes. I have “survived cancer.” So far, anyway. Like I have said before, I will never quite be sure that I survived cancer until I die of something else.
I have had this misfortune of being stricken with cancer, and now I am burdened with unending gratitude to be endlessly thankful that I am not dead. When anything goes wrong for someone who managed to get through cancer, folks whisper disapprovingly, “they’re lucky to be alive.”
Someone hits my car? “At least I’m not dead.” I break a bone? “At least I’m not dead.” My kids get bullied at school? “At least I’m not dead.” I carry a toxic burden of gratitude now that I have survived cancer (for now - again not about to call checkmate on cancer.)
I merely survived cancer. It’s not as if I used up all of my wishes and hopes and dreams on not dying.
“It will grow back.”
My hair will, eventually, I guess.
What about that strong, confident, young mom of three?
