I DID IT and it looks AWESOME!!!

Ok, here’s the story. When I learned that I’d need chemo, I was told that my hair would fall out about two weeks after chemo started. As I processed this information my thoughts gradually evolved from disappointment that I’d be losing my hair after growing it out for the first time in over a decade; to the realization that this was my chance to do something CRAZY with my hair!

My workplace is reasonably casual, but in a San Diego sort of way: shorts, tshirts, and the occasional pair of flip-flops.  Not usually edgy hair styles. On top of which my office happens to be in our headquarters building, whose occupants are probably the most conservatively-attired at the whole company (or at least in San Diego). So under normal circumstances, doing something crazy with my hair was not really something I’d be comfortable with.  Also, under normal circumstances, I’m sure I’d get sick of it before it grew out – it seems like more of a novelty than a look I want to cultivate.

But these are not normal circumstances! I happened to already have a hair appointment scheduled for August 4, the day before we leave for London. We’ll be in London for over a week, and then I’ll take the following week off for my first round of chemo. Anything crazy I might do with my hair would be almost two-and-a-half weeks old (i.e., starting to fade) by the time I go back to work. Another one or two weeks later, and it should start to fall out. And at this point, my sense of work decorum, which was always pretty marginal, has just about disappeared – in other words, I no longer give a shit.

So, what did I do? I made my hair blue!!!!

My absolutely fabulous hairdresser, Stephanie, emailed me some ideas while we planned this. In the morning she picked up the right colors and we spent the whole evening together making it happen.  She is freaking awesome.  Thank you Stephanie!!!

Some people have asked me, what if I’m in the very tiny percentage of people whose hair does not fall out?  Well, I guess I’ll have blue hair for a while then! (Actually Stephanie says it’ll probably start to fade after three weeks or so, at which point the super-blonde stripped hair will show. In other words, the canvas becomes blank again. So, maybe I should go hot pink then … ? In any case, this is incredibly unlikely.)

IN OTHER NEWS, I also had my visit with Dr. FixIt yesterday. If you’ll recall, he asked me to let him know when I was happy with the size, and I was trying to figure out how to decide that. I ended up buying a cheap C-cup bra at Target and trying it on, reaffirming my sense that Stumpy is already big enough. Since Stumpy will shrink (apparently) during radiation, and Dr. FixIt actually needs it to be bigger than the final size so that he has enough skin to work with, we have to keep going.  So he expanded it yesterday and will need to do even more later – for some period Stumpy will actually be bigger than Lefty. Since they pretty much match at this point (see the cover photo) we’ll pause here for several weeks; no need to get out of balance in the other direction sooner than necessary.

LASTLY, I want to let you all know that this will be my last posting for a while. Tonight we are headed to London! Since this is a cancer blog, not a travel blog, I’ll keep everyone posted via Facebook. Cheerio!

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