Thursday, April 25, 2019

Getting Creative with Cancer Hair

Once upon a time I had long golden curls. Genuine corkscrews. Until my first haircut, when I was five, at Best's Children's Barber Shop (a New York magnet at the time). The place was vaguely near Saint Patrick's cathedral and was probably gone with the wind before I hit adolescence. But I remember how light my head felt after those long golden curls had been removed. That was my first experience of hair not returning to a previous state. Maybe my scalp thought itself too grown-up for those corkscrew curls, but I rather missed them.
 My head felt even lighter after the first four doses of epirubicin. After all my hair fell out.
Chemo, as expected, produced first baldness and then "chemo-hair"--a frizzy condition unameliorated by coconut goop, L'Oreal Extraorinary oil, Jasmine oil from the local Asian store, coriander glop, mint glop, this cure, that cure. They all smell nice and have no effect whatsoever.
My hair did grow back. But it stands on end, permanently, sort of like my nerves. There was the additional month of radiation that produced a bald rectangle, fairly well hidden by the flap of hair above it. That geometric patch is now carpeted with kinky little curls--it's poodly. The Ibrance does make a few strands fall out after every shower but, then again, I do have more hair than what I started with back before cancer. Thick hair is one of the more interesting and less unpleasant side effects. I am told that if I am patient, I will find that approximately normal hair will return (or rather "your hair will calm down") in around five years. Meanwhile, I rather enjoy the coriander, coconut and mint glop. Without these concoctions, the hair looks marginally worse. With them, it reaches the outer borders of tame. But I imagine a future, one in which, five years from now, I am (1) alive and (2) my former hairdo has returned.

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