Fifteen years is a long time; but is it? Time compresses and expands like an accordion, often catching you off guard. A memory popped up, as they do in the infinite world of social media memory. It made me stop and examine that face. It looked a little anxious, a bit bad ass. The face was my own. Today, 15 years ago. I had just got my hair cut short to be ready for chemotherapy, when I would likely be robbed of the lot. It was very long and lush at the time.
“Just cut the majority off at first,” I was coached by my sister Rosie, the Queen of chemo. “Then once the chemo gift kicks in, your head will be burning and itching like there’s no tomorrow, and your hair will shed everywhere you go. Trust me, at that point you will be begging to shave it all off.” I took her word for it; I had no idea what she was talking about. I couldn’t imagine wishing to shave it all off, let alone the burning, itching thing.
I broached the ice cap conversation with my lovely oncologist. You know, the cap that freezes your brain and everything else — and then you don’t have to lose your hair. “Oh no,” he said. “We want the chemo to go to every last follicle on your body.” Oh great, I remember thinking at the time. “Don’t worry, sis,” said Rosie. “Most people can’t stand the brain freeze from the cold cap anyway.” I was moderately comforted. She always looked on the bright side, my sister, even when it came to chemo caps giving you brain freeze. With this cancer lark, I had entered into a whole different world.
People were amazingly complimentary about my new hairstyle. “Hollywood!” cooed the old man. “Wow, you look so cool with short hair! So young!” I wondered at the time if they were just trying to make me feel better, although I did like the new “do” for the approximately five minutes that it stayed around.
The chemo angel kicked in and it took just a few days of me thinking, over-optimistically, “Ooh, maybe I’ll be the one person whose hair doesn’t fall out,” and then the itching and the burning began in earnest. It makes my scalp itch and burn, just thinking about it. Chemo is forever the great equalizer in life. I wept in the shower as clumps of my pretty haircut came out in the streams of water. Not having been ever particularly vain or even that bothered about my hair, it came as a surprise to me that this was truly bothersome to me.
“Oh, sis, hair is so overrated!” sister told me. “If you’re lucky, you will have a really beautiful bald head like me. You only ever know that if you go bald!” That kid. She was always making me laugh, even during those dark days of diagnosis. She mailed me packages of gorgeous scarves direct from her home in Turkey to be prepared for that time, which swiftly arrived, as tough times can.
The burning, itching and shedding make you run, not walk, to the nearest barber to shave it all off, and I do remember the overwhelming relief when that happened. All the irritations immediately stopped, and I was left with a pretty, rather egg-shaped, completely bald head. Maybe not quite as beautiful as my sister’s, but at least acceptable to the few people that saw it. Sister’s hair was growing back at the time from her chemo earlier in the year and so she was the perfect chemo coach.
“Chemo is your angel!” she insisted. “Embrace her!” And I tried, I really did, but she chewed me up and spat me out every time I was in the lab. Days of oblivion, vomiting or nausea, constipation or frustration and sleeplessness followed my infusions without exception. I’ve blocked a lot of it out of the memory, I’m sure of that. But I still hear that chirpy little voice in my brain. “How’s it going, sis? Oh, I know … only four to go! You went and tried on wigs, how fun!” (It wasn’t.)
“I’ve only got half an eyebrow left,” I remember telling her. In addition to having a beacon on my head that told the world I was going through chemo in the form of a headscarf and a sickly look on my face, I looked very peculiar with this half eyebrow. “That is rude, just rude. What on earth am I supposed to do with half an eyebrow?” I asked her. Sister started howling with laughter. “That is a real problem, sis. Sorry (laughing) I don’t mean to laugh, but you’re right, that looks so freaking odd! OK, wait, let’s talk about this seriously (still laughing). If you shave it off completely, then you will have one non-existent brow and one very light one. Quite odd. However, if you pencil in the empty half of the brow, it will never match. Sister, you are screwed!” She started laughing again. “Maybe, if you think about it on the bright side, that eyebrow will probably bring you lots of sympathy presents! Result!” Oh, that girl.
It’s funny the things you remember, almost fondly, 15 long or short years down the road. Of course, it’s nearly seven years to the day that I saw my sister for the last time in Turkey and I clearly recall she still had some hair on her head (“I either look like a devout monk or a football hooligan”), but everything else had gone royally sideways. During this visit, she took me to get my eyebrows weaved or waxed or some such thing, where they would look good — or at least better than they had, because they never properly grew back. I remember her waiting for me to get this long procedure completed. “Gawd sister, you are going to have to dye your hair black to match your eyebrows!” (She laughed heartily when I eventually reappeared, and sure enough I look back on those dark caterpillars above my eyes, and they make me laugh now too.)
Fifteen years ago, I had a double mastectomy; I lost all my hair on my head and the rest of my body from chemotherapy treatments. I also walked around with half an eyebrow pretty much from the start to well after the finish. I must have looked perplexed for a very long time — or insane. Fortunately, no one ever pointed out which.
It does in some ways seem like a very long time ago, but I’m glad I can still share the stories and the laughter from that time of very mixed emotions to this time of voice and images forever in the bank, now also making me laugh quite a bit. And thank goodness for that.
I’m still of the opinion, 15 years down the road, that hair is super overrated.
