Hair obsession

I have an obsession with my hair.

I seem to think about it a lot...what's going to happen to it, what I am going to do with it and how I am going to deal with it.

Am I that shallow and self-obsessed?

I have nice hair. I have said this before. I have had a lot of different styles over the years and probably most colours of the rainbow. I have even had dreads.

It has been very long for many, many years now. Great hair, strong, glossy and a lot of it. Hairdressers love it.

So I have examined why I can't get it out of my head these past weeks since Colin.

I am come up with this: losing my hair is an obvious side effect of chemo. It's the one most non-cancerous people would come up with if stopped in the street in a straw pole and asked 'what is the most common side effect of chemotherapy'.

It's actually the one I come up with too these days.

And I think it is because I just don't know how else I might suffer. Systemic drugs are strange things...take two people with the same disease/condition; give them the same drugs at the same level...one will suffer absolutely no side effects at all and the other will be as sick as a parrot...yet they are on the same drugs with the same outcomes.

I might bounce through 6 months chemo with little suffering; I might feel a bit rough a few days each cycle or I might be on my last legs the whole time. I just don't know and won't know 'til those Domestos infusions start a-coming.

I know my white blood cells will take a hammering; I know I will take the anti-sickness as soon as they hand them over to prevent nausea and vomiting; I know I am risk of infection; I know I will probably be fatigued sometimes/all the time. I know there is a very, very good chance I will lose some or most of my hair.

And I can imagine losing my hair right now. It is real and it is tangible in my mind. I can envisage hair falling out in patches, being on my pillow in the morning.

Another reason is this: I am living in No-Mans Land. I am in that shadowy place where I know I have cancer, but I haven't started the treatment for it yet...I have seen Colin on a mammogram, I can feel him in my breast but I haven't started the treatment.

I am waiting....waiting...waiting.

In fact, the RB haven't even told me what day my first chemo is yet. Cancer for nearly 3 weeks and no date for chemo commencement (note to self: they may have forgotten about me; give 'em a ring at the end of the week).

I feel quite strongly about this hair thing...I mean I get the psycho-emotional aspects of breast cancer for a woman...the loss of her femininity via breast and hair...the very things which make us female to the physical world (I still have a big ass though)...

Friends say, hell the breast nurse said 'don't shave your head/wait and see/wear the ice cap/what you got to lose?'.

All I have to lose is my hair, people. Feck feminine markers in the physical world. Feck watching it fall off if the ice cap doesn't work. Feck chemotherapy.

Oh Chemotherapy! Up Yours! (I doff my cap to Poly Styrene of the Slits circa 1977 here).

You ain't going to take my hair, my inner-bleaching little systemic cancer treatment, I will take my hair.

That's it. It's a middle finger up to chemotherapy. I know it is my friend really...I know it doesn't really want to kill me, just Colin and Malcom et al. But I am going to take control of this....Demi Moore in GI Jane; Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta; Britney Spears in real life...

The decision is made. I shall get it done next week. I'd like to think I am going to shock my friends, but as they all read this they'll already know...the downside to putting your thoughts and future actions on a blog for everyone to read!

Just call me Jean Luc Picard from now on: 'Make it so' Ollie the Hairdresser....