Fighting Breast Cancer

Tonight’s the night.  I’m shaving my head.

This morning started off ok.  I took my second dose of Emend and went to Mayo for my Neulasta shot.  I still felt really good. 

Later in the early evening, my family and I went out to dinner.  I was starting to get that achey feeling I got the last time I had Neulasta.  A side effect of the drug is that it causes slight bone pain.  For me, it causes a back ache and I can’t sit for very long.  Still, I was hungry (thank you Emend!) and as I bent over my plate of salmon, a big chunk of my hair fell into my food.  How appetizing.

I looked up and announced that I was going to shave my head as soon as we got home.  Michael was a little drunk and he was looking a little upset.  My mom looked like she was about to cry.  Dad kept eating and said, “All Right!”, very enthusiastically. 

As soon as we returned home, I went into the master bathroom and found Michael’s clippers.  Then I plugged them in an outlet in the kitchen and started hacking away at my head.  It’s not that easy to shave your own head without a mirror.  I ended up having to have my mom finish the job.

Soon, all my hair was piled on the floor.  (Are my roots really that dark?)  Michael was weeping openly and began stuffing my hair into a zip-lock baggie to keep.  This made me angry.  I didn’t want this hair.  This was cancer hair and I wanted to throw it out.  I knew what he was doing.  He wanted to keep something of me in case I didn’t make it.  He still doesn’t understand that there is no way that I’m going to die from this.  There’s part of him that doesn’t get it.  That’s okay.  I’ll show him.

I went into the bathroom to look at myself.  I look like my brother.  My mom shaved my head so that I have a military looking brush cut.  I basically have half of an inch of hair all the way around.  It looks so foreign; I look androgynous.  I’m surprised to see that I’m tearing up.  Why am I getting emotional over this?  I knew it was going to happen, but I’m just sort of suspended in awe of what I look like.  My head looks so small without all my hair and I can’t stop touching it.  It doesn’t look like me; it doesn’t feel like me.  But it is me.  This is what a person with cancer looks like.  There is no denying it now.

I go to the living room to introduce my dad to his new son.

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