Filling in

I have begun going places without my wig since it's so hot now and have even deceived myself into believing that I have hair. It looks so much more covered to me than it did before and, although I still can't actually comb it, it kind of lays one way or the other.

6/30/2011
3 months after last chemo session

My mom was here last week and was surprised at how fast it was growing. She could see a difference in the week she was here. (Of course, not wearing the wig means it doesn't get flattened as much so maybe it was just standing on end a little more often.) A friend of mine dropped by two days ago and I was au naturel. She didn't act shocked or anything but she did say, "So when is your hair going to start growing?" :(

6/30/2011
3 months after last chemo session

A Dandelion is Born

Although it's not growing very fast, it is finally growing and filling in a little. It looks a lot like a dandelion gone to seed now only not so long (hence the name of this blog). Can you be Rapunzel if your hair is grey?

6/10/2011

10 weeks after last chemo session

Barely Visible Fuzz

The doctors had said that my hair would begin to grow back three weeks after my last chemo session. Since it had originally taken it two and a half weeks to fall out I was not that optimistic but after six weeks I was starting to panic. I had an appointment with my oncologist that week and asked her about it. (Mom had already told me not to expect anything soon; it had taken me two years to grow hair when I was born!) She said that people with naturally blonde hair tend to be somewhat delayed in hair growth. I guess this means I am a natural blonde (despite what color my hair actually grows in as). I spent so much time rubbing my bald little head that I was sure any hair that grew would be rubbed off but I couldn't seem to help myself. Finally, at 7 1/2 weeks, I felt the tiniest difference. I decided I would have Summer take pictures every two weeks so I could see the progress.

5/26/2011

8 weeks after last chemo session

I had to show a light on it so the hair would actually show up in the picture. Pathetic, I know.

5/26/2011

8 weeks after last chemo session

You can see where we didn't do too great a job when we shaved it--there are spare hairs here and there that look longer. This must mean that you don't lose ALL your hair with chemo, just most of it. It still looks awfully thin but at least it's growing.

The Wait Begins

Now we can fast forward. Once your hair falls out you have no hope of getting any back until after chemo. My last session was 3/31/2011. Kind of an interesting side note: although all the hair on my head fell out right away, other body hair took a little longer. I saw that my eyelashes were thinning some time during the 4th or 5th chemo session but it wasn't until I was completely done that I realized I had only five or six eyelashes left on each eye. I looked like a fat Yzma

only my lashes were never that long. You can see some just-coming-in-lashes, though, if you look closely enough.

Even those few I had left were very likely to fall out. When I got down to two eyelashes on each side, I broke down and bought some fake eyelashes to wear to church. (By the way, fake eyelashes tend to be outrageously long. I had to trim the ones I bought so they didn't look quite so fake.) June 5th was the big day. It took me about 30 minutes to get them on and I had taken them off and put them on so many times by then that the adhesive wasn't really working too well on the ends so they kind of poked up.

6/5/2011

2 months after last chemo session

Then when I took them off that night, I pulled off the few natural eyelashes that were left. Definitely not worth it in my opinion. As long as you wear eyeliner, people have to get really close to see you don't actually have eyelashes.

Taking it all off

That night (Sunday, January 2, 2011) I asked Summer to help me shave my head. I still had a couple of patches of hair but rubbing my hand over it to make it fall out also made my scalp hurt and there wasn't enough with which to do anything. I believe this is where the scarring process started for poor Summer. We looked all over for the electric hair cutting set Mario used to torture the boys with when they were growing up and we couldn't find it anywhere. Finally, Mario said he thought he gave it to Alex (who, I'm sure, burned it--not one of his favorite childhood memories!). So we pulled out a new disposable razor and Summer got to work.

They tell you not to use a razor to shave your head and now I know why. It's practically impossible to not nick yourself and head wounds bleed quite a lot. When I finally stood up and looked in the mirror, I was shocked to see a wrinkled old man with red dots all over his head looking back at me. I had not realized how feminine hair makes you look! My head also looked a lot smaller than it should--again, hair makes your head look a lot bigger than it really is. I'm not sure I ever came to terms with my new bald look although it doesn't shock me anymore like it did back in the beginning.

The insurance company told me they would not pay for a wig no matter what caused the baldness but Mario, I guess seeing how affected I was, told me to go ahead and buy it. I went back on Tuesday and bought the wig, a couple of sleeping caps that I wore around the house and a wig care kit. Here is a picture of the good wig. Notice the blotchy skin and watery eyes--all side affects of the chemo.

1/23/2011

5 1/2 weeks after beginning chemo

Bad Wigs and other Nightmares

So, I was treating my hair really gently from the 29th on, hoping it would last longer. Every time I even touched my hair some would fall out. If I combed my fingers through my hair a handful would come out and my scalp would sting where it had been.

I had ordered an inexpensive wig from a catalog for Christmas but couldn't really see how it looked because I still had hair that was bunched up underneath it. Still, I was not impressed and I thought the color was too dark (so hard to tell what color it's going to be from a catalogue picture!) so Saturday Summer and I went shopping for wigs here locally. We found one I really liked but it was $430 and I didn't know if the insurance would pay for it or not. After all the expensive tests I had to have done, not to mention the biopsies and the surgery to implant a mediport, we weren't looking for more expenses. I decided I'd wait and call the insurance company on Monday to see what they said.

Finally, while I was showering Sunday morning, nearly all my hair fell out--big gobs of it clogging the drain. When I got out and dried off, I had patches of hair still left but, truly, it was mostly gone. I put the cheap wig on to wear to church but it looked awful. Something I didn't know until after I had bought the wig is that when you buy wigs online, they normally do not come styled. You have to take it to a salon and have them cut and style it to look like the picture in the catalog. (Another $50 after the haircut I just got and the wig? Then an additional $50 to get it restyled every time you wash it? I don't think so.) I decided to go to church with just a scarf that day.

1/2/2011

2 and 1/2 weeks after first chemo session with the bad wig

The Beginning of the End

On December 16, 2010, I began chemo (TAC which is an acronym for a cocktail composed of taxotere, adriamycin and cyclophosphamide) which I would receive every three weeks for six sessions. I was told I could expect my hair to fall out two to two and a half weeks after my first session.

We were supposed to fly to Utah the day after Christmas to celebrate my father's 80th birthday but our flight from the east coast was cancelled due to an announced storm (that never arrived, I might add) and with all the Christmas travel, we were not able to rebook. My mother had arranged for a family photo to be taken since everyone but Sabrina would have been there. It was scheduled for the day my hair was supposed to fall out (based on the doctors' predictions). Since we couldn't go, we took family pictures in our home that day and my hair had started to thin but was not too bad yet.

12/29/2010
2 weeks after first chemo session

Getting Ready

In early December Summer and I went to get haircuts--she wanted a trim and I had been looking at wigs and wanted to see what one of those styles would look like on me. I asked the hairdresser for this...

and got this!

12/11/2010
5 days pre-chemo

Really? Maybe all the extra chins make it look different on me. Anyway, I thought having it shorter would help me mentally prepare (at least that's what the doctors said).

How it all started

11/25/2010
3 weeks pre-chemo

I was diagnosed with breast cancer just one day before this picture was taken, the day before Thanksgiving 2010. I have always disparaged my hair for being too straight, too thin, even lately, too grey, so maybe this journey has been to remind me of how great it is to have hair.