04/02/2013

2 years after last chemo session

 

So, how long has it been now? I have taken pictures but never posted them and by the time I go back to look at them, I can't remember when I took them. (Is that Alzheimer's I need to worry about now?) Finally, I remembered--maybe because it was the anniversary...

I'm still trying to get my hair the right color but at least I think I'm going in the right direction this time. It got a little white there for a while. It's still too thin, especially on the crown, and I have a lot of breakage around my face--bangs have splintered off and the parts on the sides that I want to get long keep breaking as well. That's the bad news. The good news is I'm still doing well after two years and have had no recurrence. I started teaching Seminary last November so I'm pretty wasted but I don't think I can fairly attribute that to disease :).

Life is good. My kids are doing well, Mario and I are trying to buy a home and my job is promising. Most importantly, I have learned to count my blessings--all my blessings--every day. Life is good.

I think it's a sign that I'm really recovered from cancer when I can't remember I ever had it. I have not been able to remember to take my quarterly hair pictures to post and, to be honest, I keep getting it cut so you really can't tell how much it's growing anyway. Here I am on September 30, 2012--18 months after my last chemo session. It's a little too blonde (having a lot of trouble explaining what I want) but I realized during the last two months that the roots aren't growing in all that dark anymore and the grey is minimal. Hopefully, I can start letting it grow out in my "natural" color!

09/30/2012

18 months after last chemo session

I'm trying to get it the way it was before. Right now it's really thin and not quite long enough but I'm hoping it will fix itself over time.

New Style

4/10/12

I know I said I was only going to post every quarter but I had to show you my first real haircut since chemo. It's pretty short but the ends are so much better now! Of course, it's one of those style you can't fix without the right goo so after three HORRIBLE hair days, I finally broke down and bought the expensive goo. I still need practice but it's doing better. This picture is what the stylist did before I left the salon. I have hair!

The One-Year Mark

04/01/2012

One year after last chemo session

It's hard to believe a whole year has passed since that last chemo session. I met with my oncologist this past month and things still look very good. My energy is not fabulous and I still have joint pain from the Arimidex but I'm healthy and have gotten back into life. I feel like I've returned to the land of the living.

As for the hair, I've decided to go to a quarterly posting. I've started getting it cut now so you won't see great changes in length from month to month. I'm hoping in another year it's back to the way it was. Still not crazy about the color. Maybe Summer can figure that out for me when she comes home next week. (Yeah!)

As you can see from a couple of posts ago, my hair is REALLY straight and kind of resistant to curl. I'm going to talk to my hairdresser this week about the possibility of a perm--probably not this time because I'm due for a cut and when it's shorter it's easier to curl but maybe next month. I'll have to see what she says. It feels like it's filling in a little--doesn't look quite as bald in the back--but still not very thick. It's getting some shine, though, by the roots (not that dead stuff on the ends) so it's starting to look healthier, too.

On a more positive note, my eyelashes have fully recovered and my nails are much better. I still have vertical ridges in one of my pinkie fingernails but the others are smooth and still regaining their strength. I keep them pretty short since I do so much typing but they grow fast and don't split much at all.

See you in three months!

My First Haircut

Here we are, eleven months after my last chemo session, and I actually had a haircut! I took this picture before I had it cut

2/13/2012

so you could 1) see that it really does look like a dandelion (I don't know why it sticks up like that when I dry it!) and 2) see that my poor hairdresser didn't have much to work with. She really cut off very little and some of the ends are still fried but she'll get to those next time. You can also see that my hair is not curly or thick like they promise it will be after chemo so I guess everybody reacts differently.

This is what it looks like now, after the haircut and after I curled it.

2/14/2012

And here it is two weeks later, on my normal day to take a picture for this blog. It looks longer to me even between these last two.

3/1/2012

eleven months after last chemo session

I'm still trying to get the color right. I can't figure out what's so hard about getting that color but she has not been able to nail it yet. Summer says I should give up and go somewhere else...

Almost Ready for a Cut

1/31/2012
10 months after last chemo session

I felt as tired as I look in this picture. I started full-time work January 9th and I am just beat when I come home. Still, I wanted to keep the hair pictures up. I got my hair colored again January 4th and asked her to make it less red. I still think it's a little red but I can't seem to get that across to her. I wanted to show a picture of the back, too...

...because it's really thin and fine. When I was about to lose my hair, everyone told me it would grow back thicker, coarser and more curly, although a little darker. The only thing I got was darker. It's much thinner and more fine, although I am taking medication that lists as a side effect thinning hair. It's been four weeks since my color job and you can definitely see the roots. I have two more weeks to go until my appointment and I think I'll be able to get a cut this time. Since my hair has grown in so unevenly it's a little hard to curl but it's WAY better than it was even six months ago. (Yes, I started using a curling iron on it the week I went back to work.) As you can see, I have enough hair now to have a bad hair day!

Best Thing about Christmas

12/25/2011
Almost 9 months after my last chemo session

The red hasn't faded much (the flash makes it look lighter) but I can't worry about silly things like my hair when I'm holding this beautiful little one. What a joy!

Yikes!

Since my hair has been growing in so dark and grey, I thought I'd go get it colored to what it was before this chemo thing. I even took my wig (which was really close to my hair color before--a little darker but not bad) and asked the stylist to get as close to that as she could. When she showed me the color swatches, it looked like the color was pretty close. When she finished my hair it was not even remotely close. I now have red hair and, although I have had a red-head's complexion my whole life, I hate the red hair. I hope I can stand it until January when I can get it redone. It's still thin, especially on the crown where it used to be really thick, but it is getting longer and doesn't look quite so concentration-camp as it used to. I sure expect a lot from a head of hair!

11/30/11

eight months after last chemo session

Losing it again...

My great sadness is that although my hair started to come in pretty thick, I'm losing it again, this time due to the drug they have me on. I don't think I'll lose it all like I did with chemo but it's definitely thinning. What an indictment that my hair loss bothers me more than my mastectomy!

I underwent plastic surgery this past month for reconstruction and am now completely through with everything on my to-do list as far as this cancer goes. Yeah! I'm flying out tomorrow to see my new grandson (who is on his way but not here quite yet...)

11/08/11

seven months after last chemo session

Growing...

9/30/2011
six months after last chemo session

Very kind people constantly tell me my hair looks great. I think they're all headed straight for the celestial kingdom...

I saw my oncologist yesterday and have been declared officially healthy and completely DONE with cancer. I'm through with treatments and don't plan to ever need them again so life is very good. My final surgery (cosmetic only) is scheduled for October 17 after which I can turn my back on this past year and truly feel like I'm back in the human race again. Yeah!

Glad to be cool

Here's the latest--running behind like always. I decided to go to monthly but I didn't even make that deadline (which would have been August 31).

9/5/2011

5 months after last chemo session

It's coming in really curly and grey. I mousse it down on the top and up in the back so it looks darker than it really is. The ends, especially, are really light (white?). I am able to part it now (with enough mousse) so it's looking more deliberate than accidental. When the mousse starts to wear out, I just wet it down again. It's been great to have short hair during August and is a breeze to "fix" in the mornings but I'm still looking forward to longer hair.

Is it long enough to be called a hairstyle?

I'm a little behind on these postings as well. I have only worn my wig to church for the last several weeks. (I would have given that up as well but I didn't want Sabrina's homecoming or my Relief Society lesson to be overshadowed by my "new" hairstyle.) It's almost enough to be called hair now.

7/31/11

4 months after last chemo session

Look how curly it is! for the first time in my life I have naturally curly hair!

7/31/11

4 months after last chemo session

Thickening up

Although I can't really see progress from day to day, my family notices a difference and I can tell the difference from picture to picture. Summer went on trek for three days and when she came back she could tell my hair had grown quite a bit. My parents were here in June for Summer's graduation and came again this past weekend for Sabrina's homecoming and they could really see a big difference. I have finally ditched the wig at work and it is SOOOO much cooler. The young woman who works with me said my haircut was "fierce." I think that describes it pretty well.

7/15/2011
3 and 1/2 months after last chemo session

It's hard to comb because it has a mind of it's own. It grows in any which way and although I can mousse it down, some of it lays right and some left. In the front, it grows away from my face the way my brother's did when he was a little boy with a buzz cut.

I CAN see a difference almost daily in my eyelashes. (Or course, I put mascara on them to make them look darker and longer. Maybe I should try that with my hair!) Even if they don't get any longer than this, I'll be happy.

7/15/2011
3 and 1/2 months after last chemo session

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