Hair today, gone tomorrow.

It took two weeks for my locks to unlock from my head. The unlocking started some emotional unfurling as well, feeling hair-brained if you will excuse my pun. I had started thinking the hair loss would not happen. Hoping I would be the exception to the rule. I am having a hard time being the rule, not the exception.

I warned my daughters, seven- and three-years of age, before I started Chemo that the medicine that mommy was having to take might make her hair fall out. Two weeks from my initial treatment, after I thought the hair would stay, I started shedding. I have ultra thick hair and I am used to my tresses carpeting the house but it became overly annoying. So I told the girls that I my hair was going away. I have during my whole cancer experience tried my best to protect them and inform them gingerly, in hopes of not to freak them out. But their response to my locks unlocking left me feeling unnerved. They found it funny. They were so intrigued that they would randomly run their sweet, tiny fingers through my hair and announce in an awed and excited tone, “Mommy look how much came out this time!” In my efforts to keep them from freaking out I began to freak out. I finally had to ask them to stop because I did not have my wig yet.

Next we went wig shopping. The whole family. On my 36th birthday.

Yep, THIRTY-SIX, I am displaying it loud and proud. I will forever love my birthdays and the increasing number it brings! Now on with the show, and oh yes what I am about to share with you was quite the show!

It was not planned, the wig shop just happened to be within walking distant from my birthday-lunch-restaurant choice. Maybe it was a subconscious decision on my part, I am not sure. This event turned out to be one of the strangest and most enlightening experiences in regards to my daughters integral part in my life. Not to down play my precious son’s role, but at 15-months old, I don’t explain the steps of journey, he just gets the shock value of shedding mommy and lots of cuddling. The girls worked that wig shop like they had been there scads of times before! I was quite the opposite. I scanned the small boutique apprehensively, almost afraid to touch the blank-face heads with a potential new “do.” Now, the girls were telling me aloud (very loud, or so it seemed) to try one on. The sales’ lady offers me to sit in front of the mirror and she would “fit” me. Well, this invitation was all the girls needed to hear. Suddenly, half the heads in the shop were bared and a mound of fake hair amassed on the table in front of me. The lady would barely have one on my head before my girls would proclaim their opinion. They held nothing back. Their honesty was so funny and refreshing and unabashed. Little voices ensued, “Mommy, I don’t like that one. Take it off. Mommy, try this one. What about this one? Ohhh, yea get that one, mommy!” And my three-year old could not figure out “why those ladies don’t have their eyes?” But it did not bother her enough to keep her from ripping their hair off!

I left the shop without a wig. I did, however, leave with complete amazement at my girls. Where did these fearless, opinionated, take-it-all-in-stride creatures come from?!

The night before my second treatment, I told my husband when he came home from his moonlight job we would scalp me. Well, I resolved I would just take the “GI Jane” approach. But when the hubby had the clippers in hand I took off my glasses, he told me to close my eyes and the buzzing ensued. The odd coincidence was, [and I swear to you this is true] the movie “GI Jane” was on one of the movie channels the next day (and a few days following)! I remember going to see the movies in theaters a few years back. I have a few favorite parts but not a favorite movie really. Of course I felt drawn to watch it. Her plight much different than mine. But I connected with something familiar with the protagonist (other than the same hair cut) an aura of sheer determination. The shaven head, along with the movie, gave me a new perceptive. I may feel beaten down, but I am not beaten!

Now the next morning, post-shaved head had mixed reviews. Note: I had warned my daughters, as well as my mom and sister, (who were staying with us to help with the kids during my next treatment) the night before they went to bed that mommy might shave her head when daddy came home later that night.

The three-year daughter crawls in our bed in the almost-daybreak hours of the morning, calling my name as she crawled in the bed. I answer her so she can find me. She speaks again, “Mommy, Mom…mie, your hair.” I remind her of me telling her about it last night, just lay down. She seems content to be over the shock as we snuggle back to sleep. The 15-month-old son was the biggest set back, he was not warned. After his usual procedure of alerting us he was awake and ready to exit the crib, my husband gets him and lays him down beside me in the bed. I turn and greet him with my can’t-hold-back-how-much-I-love-you smile. I forget I am sans hair. He looks at me and quickly turns his head and cautiously cuts his eyes back at me. I speak to him and reach for him but he turns and whimpers. Then I laugh as I realize he is not so sure if this is mommy. He warms up after a bit of mommy jabber. The next person to jolt is my mom. I had to wake her to help me with the baby. I started talking to her to rouse her and said, “Mom, don’t be shocked I am…” Her eyes open and she jumps, jumps and gasps! You did it she says amazed and groggily bewildered. All of this is taking place during summer break, so my oldest daughter of seven, emerges much later in the morning. I am at the dining room table feeding the baby, my back to the stairs and my sister (who only replied “Whoa” to the no hair head) tells me to look to see who was up. I turn to see my oldest child is standing, or frozen I should say, in mid-descend of the stairs with her mouth wide open, speechless. I reply, “ I told you I was going to shave it off.” “But, mommy,” she almost whispers. “I didn’t think you would do it.”

I went to get the wig that day. I took the girls and my mom. I went blonde (with roots.) I liked the wig, as having to wear one goes. But I ultimately chose one my girls approved. The 3-year-old, who is blonde and often has the question posed as to where her hair color comes from since daddy and mommy have dark-brown hair; gives the excited approval of telling me, “You look like me, mommy!” The 7-year-old also says she likes it best. And my mom also was a big thumbs up. Out we went from the wig shop, me as a short-haired blonde.

Stage III: Acceptance and Awareness

I have come to realize I have lived most of my life in theory. Unlike a lot of curious people I always question the traditional, the happen-stance, the why. But I have recently had the epiphany of recalling that early in life I figured out the real and unreal. I guess that is why I cannot be fake or tolerate flakiness. It is why at four-years old, I posed the rhetorical question to my mom that there was no Santa. This truth cost me a few childhood friends or one in particular from second grade, Rhonda. Perhaps the my quest for answers also tends to make me almost over-vigilant in my pursuit, to the degree of not letting it go until I have proven it (right or rarely wrong [ominous laugh inserted].) With Rhonda, I was so baffled that she did not get my logic I was compelled to leave my desk (and school task I was supposed to be doing) to seek the reasonable backup of our teacher’s aide, Ms. Booker. She escorted me back to my desk and told me something along the lines of stop talking about what I did not know and do my work. I was so taken aback. My conclusion to the fiasco was another question, “Did Ms. Booker not know the truth, either?”

I remember having such a hard time with theories of science and different tenets; until inconveniently in my late teens. I realized that most of what I had been taught I could not accept because I was not aware of what it really pertained to – someone trying to prove their truth or idea of it. As children, most of us learn wrong and right, good and evil. We learn it in our own little world, the world we only can accept because it is all we are aware exists at

the time.

Due to my family’s obsession that attractiveness meant skinny (their one shallow point), I was very weight and health aware (as most teens are.) But I had to read theories and research on how foods were digested and chemically broken down. First, I stopped drinking milk when I learned we were the only mammals that drank another animal’s milk after weening. Then I didn’t eat pork when I found out the flesh had some worm/organisms in it. Lastly, when I was required to read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair in tenth grade, which is about exposing the atrocities of work conditions during the industrial revolution. After absorbing it, instead of becoming a human rights activist, I became a vegetarian for the next two and half years.

Oddly, my health issues at present lead me back to the afore mentioned phase I passed off as pure vanity. I ignored my weight and health quite on purpose after having kids. It does not help that I have hubby that has never found me undesirable, no matter my size (a fact that still amazes me.) I also I have made sure my daughters have never heard me say I am fat or on a diet. I wanted my kids to know that beauty and value was from within. But I also told them to take care of their body and it would take care of them. Advice I did not practice thoroughly.

Now, being overweight bothered me, some. But not enough to cease indulgence. I would get back on track for awhile but really had no motivation because I just felt vain. Well the funny thing about avoiding one evil is I accepted another. I thought not being obsessed with health issues meant I would not be faced with them. My theory was to do what I enjoyed when I could because motherhood (among my other jobs) had such high demands. I would be fine no matter how I ate or often I exercised. I swapped vanity for mad neglect. I refused to accept responsibility for what I have been given…life.

So, now I am aware, once again of my health. But for the first time, I am doing it for the right reason. I have to think about death (not dwell on it) if I want to live. I have to think about the life I want, to be able to accept death in eons to come!

I also have recently to accept that my cancer has reoccurred in my breast. I am aware I have to submit to traditional treatment at this point. But I still eat organic as much as I can and make sure my household is as toxin-free as possible on a budget. I have decided that progressive and alternative cannot exist with out reflection on the traditional. I have hated the fact that I had to submit to chemotherapy. But I also know, that my alternative methods kept the rest of me disease-free and gave me an awareness on how all of my life should be; a careful reflection of everything around me. Over the years, I have gone through phases of awareness for different facets of body, mind or spirit. But I have never fused all of them together. This fusion is not without hiccups and growing pains. It is not always fun to critique yourself, honestly. I my case it has become a necessity. I am one of those people that learns things my own way, the hard way.

I still have my theories and doubts. I don’t think I would do it differently (looking back eight months.) Choosing alternative medicine after having a lump removed from my breast was what I was ready to except. I needed the drastic life change. Now that I have started chemotherapy, I realized I needed that time to regain health. Now I in no way like this current scenario, but at this point it is necessary (and what I promised my husband if we had a reoccurrence.) My theory is there has to be a marriage in some way of the alternative and traditional. They each have their place. Once I have all the chemotherapy and probably more surgery, I will return to my Gerson (juice) therapy for a few months to make sure I have thoroughly gotten this crapola kicked in the big rotunda. Then I will maintain a life that is organic, mostly meat-free and sugar-free, with fewer processed foods as well.

Down with cancer, long live me!