Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

When it comes to cancer, hair is a funny thing. Not often funny in a ha ha way, but more funny in a much more complicated way.

A great many cancer treatments are extremely tough on the body. It’s the weird thing about cancer treatments – the patient often feels better before treatment than during treatment, lending further thought to the idea that the cure/treatment is often worse than the disease. On the many casualties; collateral damage, if you’d like; of cancer treatment is the loss of hair.

For much of my life, I had thought, “What’s the big deal? So, you lose your hair to save your life. Lots of people have no hair.” 

That was before I was diagnosed with cancer, and well before I met fellow patients in support groups and at other functions.

For a great many people, the thought of losing one’s hair is traumatic. So much of a person’s identity is caught up in appearance, and just think of all the time we’ve spent checking our appearance, primarily our hair, before stepping out of the house or even the leaving the restroom at work. 

It’s a big part of our identities, no doubt.

I remember my friend Tony, a gentleman of about 70 years of age, speaking out at group once about a possible future treatment he might undergo. He didn’t want to consider the treatment, and the first thing he mentioned in his position on the subject was that he didn’t want to lose his hair. 

Then there’s Gloria, a neighbor of mine and a member of the same group, who continues to avoid a treatment for her condition based primarily on the fact that it will cause her to lose her hair, and that it would be permanent for the treatment would be for the rest of her life.

I spoke with Lori and others on the topic, how people were hesitant to lose their hair despite the treatment potentially helping them. To me, it’s worth rolling the dice. A small price to pay for killing cancer, right?

But, I now realize diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks. Particularly for women. Lori explained that seeing a bald man out and about is not that uncommon. There’s natural male baldness, fashionable baldness and then, of course, medically-induced baldness. The thing is, you don’t always know one from the other. You don’t immediately assume a bald man is a sick man.

With women though, Lori said, a bald woman is quite remarkable and noticeable. It’s an oddity, and it’s not a far leap to assume that a bald woman is a woman battling a disease.

Who wants to be viewed as a person battling a disease? It’s part of all cancer patients’ identities, but most cancer patients don’t want it to be the main part of the identity, something immediately assumed by people they don’t even know or speak with.

I get that now.

For me, I was told I was more than likely going to lose my hair undergoing chemotherapy during my stem cell transplant. Okay, so I’m going to lose my hair. But, if I’m going to do so, I’m going to do it my way.

My stem cell transplant was going to happen after my initial induction therapy treatment, a process that would last three to six months. That gave me time to “get in shape” for the rigors of transplant; a training camp, if you will. And, what makes for a better training camp than a total focus on the work at hand – nutrition, exercise, etc.? Since I was going to lose my hair at the end of training camp (and I had so many better things to do in the interim), I let my hair and beard go. No haircuts and no shaves necessary. 

Going to do it my way.

My way was a shave down party just before my stem cell transplant process. As I guy who has had long hair often during my adult life, too long of hair on many occasions, I knew I had a lot of friends who wanted their shot at cutting it too. So, I offered them up an opportunity – you can take your whacks on my hair for a $10 donation to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.

$250 later, I was bald and beardless.

I was thankful I didn’t have some weird birthmark on my head. That would have sucked. I was also immediately aware of how cold my head was even though it was still 60 degrees or so outside.

By the way, having a shaved head is a quite a bit different than having a bald head. With my initial treatment of Cytoxan, I didn’t lose my hair, not immediately. I actually had a bit of a five o’clock shadow going on. Then, ten days to two weeks later, my hair started falling out for real. I noticed it first, I think, while washing my face. I literally washed off a great bit of my beard and mustache. Seeing that, I wiped a wet hand over the stubble on the top of my head, and it came back covered in hair. 

Uh oh!

I showed Lori and Donna by rubbing my hand over my head four or five times, with the result being a paper towel covered with hair that used to be on the top of my head. 

Going through the rest of the process, I lost most of the hair on top of my head. I had some little peach fuzz on top, not new growth, but hair that never left I think. Most every whisker on my face disappeared, save maybe twenty percent of my mustache and a thin line under my lower lip. I’ve lost about half of my eyebrows, I think, writing this post on December 15. Maybe three-quarters of my leg hair. 

Weird. I’m now a naked mole rat. 

So, might as well do it my way. You know, have some fun with it.