The past two weeks haven't exactly been stellar for me. Chemo brain seems to be taking over lately in odd little ways. For instance, last week Wednesday I misplaced a birthday card within minutes of signing it. I had let Pearl outside and then gone into the kitchen to sign it while waiting for her, went to let her back inside when she barked, and when I came back to the kitchen the card was gone! I turned the house upside down looking for it...in the trash, in the refrigerator, in the oven, in the closet...who knows where I might have put it. But it was gone...vanished...poof! Over the next couple of days I kept looking, retracing my steps of that morning, certain it would appear but still not finding it. Until Jill was here this weekend, looking through the Christmas cards we've received and found it in the middle of them. I can't tell you how relieved I was!
Monday morning I had a vague memory of Rich showing me a present he had bought for one of the kids, but couldn't remember if the memory was real and, if it was, what I had done with the present. This happened again when shopping later in the day...I had a vague memory of already buying the gift I was again looking at, so I put it back and went home to take a look around the house. Fortunately, I found the gift that Rich had bought, and also the gift that I almost bought again. I guess what I was told about chemo brain sometimes lasting up to 10 years is true!
Yesterday, I had an appointment with my oncologist, just to review blood tests and how I'm doing in general. All the really important things are fine...I'm healthy again and only have ONE MORE chemo infusion, in January. But the news that I didn't like hearing was that my hair is most likely not going to grow back to being anything more than just the peach fuzz that it is now. She tossed out all of my theories and speculations and said that "we'll see what happens" once I'm totally done in January, but she didn't have much hope in her voice. I was crushed. At the onset of chemo there had always been a carrot at the end of the stick...that being all the possibilities of how my hair would grow back. No one ever mentioned the possibility of it NEVER growing back. I know that I'm lucky to be alive and well again, and that there are so many others who are not as fortunate as I am who have much bigger things to worry about. I remind myself of that daily and am so thankful for that, and remorseful when I feel sorry for myself. But dang it all, I never planned on being bald for the rest of my life...it's really hard to wrap my arms around that.
I appologized after whining about it to a dear friend of mine who is battling her own battle of cancer, because my reason seems so trivial compared to what she has gone through. But she wisely and graciously said to me that "it's little in the big scale of things, but big in the little scale of things, and in that little scale of things is where we live most of the time." I think she captured it perfectly.
I know of two other women who's hair didn't grow back after chemo and I'm going to call them after the first of the year and form our own support group. I'm sure there are others out there we can include and we'll call ourselves the "Beautiful Bald Babes". I think that's a great way to start the new year!
