Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Day 15, Treatment #1

So I wake up, Dan says I slept well. Yeah, I was probably snoring. I get up and remove my hat. My hair is all smushed down. I leave it like that because I'm afraid it might all kind of peel off. I wash up a little, and carefully touch my head. The hair doesn't come off, and I carefully run my fingers through it to fluff it up a little. It doesn't come off in my hands, and that's ok, but I'm not going to bother it a whole lot more until after I eat breakfast.


We get breakfast done. I'm a bit crampy, so I have a couple of tylenol and enjoy the heating pad for a bit. I check the email, use the phone, and decide it's time to try my hair.

I take a plastic bag and lay it on the counter, reach up, and pull some hair. Out it comes. Hm. I pull again. Out it comes. Not every single strand, but good size pinches of hair, maybe 20-30? strands each. I continue to pull. And pull. I pull for maybe 45 minutes, and I can tell that I've gotten lots of hair out. It feels pretty thin. Daniel and Breon watch me a little bit; they say that it looks weird to see someone do that. (you think it's weird to watch...) Oh my gosh, to pull and pull, and it doesn't hurt or anything. You can't even tell that you're doing anything to your head.

I was surprised at 2 things. One, that my hair was so dark. I have always had the impression that I had medium brown hair. The hair that I pulled out is dark brown. Yes, there's some gray, mostly in the front on top, but I really didn't know that it was that dark of brown. And the weirdest thing. The root bulbs are dark, like burnt. When you pull a healthy strand of hair and you happen to get the root bulb, it's white. All of these root bulbs are dark.


I am kind of glad to see the hair coming out--the chemotherapy is supposed to be acting on rapidly dividing cells, which are mainly the hair follicles, intestinal mucosa, bone marrow, and actively dividing cancer cells. Seeing the dead hair roots is proof that the chemo is working. I envision that if there are any active cancer cells they, too, are black and dead. Grrr--go get 'em.


After I've pulled over all of my head, I have quite a nest of hair in the bag. I get into the shower, and shampoo, scrubbing to release any others that may be pretty loose. I end up with only about a golf ball size clump of hair on the drain. I think I did pretty good.

I put on a little mousse (I only need a little, for what hair is left...) and as I'm getting ready, I think that I want to take some pics of what I've done. I get the camera, and Dan looks at me funny. "What are you doing?" I want some pictures of my hair loss. He's happy to oblige me.




I guess I don't need to label these top and sides, huh. He took the first one of the top, and turned the camera to show me. Whoa! I guess I really did lose some hair, huh? Here, get the side. Ok, now the other one. He shows me the side views. (I'm thinking, yuck) Good, just what I wanted. See on the back behind the right ear? That where I started last night.






And this is my hair nest.

I take a few minutes and finish my face and hair, and Daniel and I go over to Elegante to pick out a wig. I tell him I don't think it's going to take very long, after all, we've already shopped, and I have the styles written down here, so I'll just try them on again to make sure, and we'll be done.

Well. We get to the wig store and go in. Dan looks around at all the wigs, and I lead us over to the collection of Sophie boxes. I pull out the colors I had written down and try them on. Oh. These don't fit the same. And the style isn't good either. He didn't really like the colors of them, and neither did I. (what's with that??) I didn't realize just how much the hair on your head makes a difference in the way the cap fits, and the way the style is. And Daniel didn't like any of the colors we had written down. Ok, then, lets pick out some others to try on. And we did. I ended up narrowing the selections to 3, then trying to rule them out. The criteria were: it had to be wearable by tomorrow, Thursday, 1:30, so that meant the cap had to fit, as the lady said a cap alteration could take a week; the cut could be done at a 12:30 Thursday appointment if needed; and the style had to be easy, not something that needed to be fussed with too much to make it "work". All 3 choices were $99 or less, so cost was not a variable.

I put on each of the 3 again, checking the fit and feel of the caps, and how readily I could get the style to "go", and if I liked it when it did. And Dan had to like it, too. I finally eliminated the one that needed a trim, and asked her to write them up, along with a wig care kit, which includes a plastic wig stand, wig brush, wig shampoo, and wig conditioner, all for a tidy price of $16.00.

The two styles I chose were Estetica Designs, PNancy (petite) color R5LF29. A sassy dark brown with dark reds in it, for $99.00. And the other one is Hair Fashions Designs (which I haven't located on the internet yet) style BeBe color 10. It's a softer brown, shorter cut, much like my own, $78.00. As we were checking out, there is a 15% discount for the second wig. Cool.

We head home, Daniel fixes my food for me (I tell you, he's wonderful) while I go into the bathroom and take care of the "overflow", if you know what I mean. Yuck. We eat, I head to Jackson, feed mom, bleed through again, get her tucked into bed, and head home. Change again, and write here. Change again, finish this. I can't wait for Dr. to question me about my menopausal status. If there's one thing good about chemotherapy, it's supposed to induce menopause, informally called chemopause. Bring it on.

I'm putting on my hat and going to bed.