I feel it is public knowledge that anyone who goes through Chemotherapy is going to lose their hair. It is inevitable in most every case.
The standard advice is to get out ahead of it. Shave your head before it all falls out. Spare yourself the devastation of watching it come out in clumps. Shave it and feel empowered and ready to conquer. Don’t go through the anguish if seeing your hair all over your pillow each time you get out of bed. Don’t deal with trying to brush your hair and having it come out in clumps.
I understand the scenarios above as I dealt with them. In fact, I didn’t want to look at my pillow. I would pick it up, go shake it over the garbage or just remove the pillow cases, place them in the dirty laundry bag, and ask the nurse for fresh ones.
It took about 2-3 weeks until I saw my hair starting to come out, and was advised to talk to the salon folks at the hospital, and schedule a shave. I didn’t want to. It wasn’t that I was in denial of what was happening or that it was inevitable. It was that, as mentioned previously, it was more than not wanting to look like a Leukemia patient. I was letting go of a past life – life as I knew it. I will always have the label of someone who ‘Had Leukemia’ ‘Is going through treatment’, and honestly, since re-growth will take way over a year, people will be able to look at me and ‘know’ I have ‘something’.
I also wanted to hold onto the hair so I still looked like the same wife, still looked like Mom, and still looked like your same friend. I wanted something to remain the same, and let’s face it, we all decide when we want to change our look, and our hair/looks are important to us.
The first day the hairdresser came to shave my head, I was sick to my stomach. I had to reschedule even though my husband was there to hold my hand. The hairdresser told me what would happen to my hair if we didn’t shave it that day. I had already put it in a cap since it was shedding so much. She described how it would begin to clump together like birds’ nests, it would begin to hurt on my scalp, but no matter, as I could barely sit up that day, so could not fathom sitting still in a chair while my head was shaved, never mind adding in the emotions of it.
She came back five days later and sure enough, my hair was a matted mess and my scalp ached, so in that sense, I wanted it shaved off however, I did not feel liberated once it was done. I did not feel stronger, or empowered, or like a warrior. The hairdresser offered a mirror, but no, I didn’t want to look. I didn’t look when she left. I didn’t look at myself in the mirror for days. I sat in the hospital room and cried for a few minutes, had my pity party, and then accepted it but it was going to take time for me to look at myself.
I have looked at myself in the mirror several times over the past few months. In fact, each night when I wash up, I remove my cap or wig. Each day I look at the growing strands of hair with curiosity, and tell them to grow stronger each day. The same thing I tell my body and mind.