Lot's of wonderful friends and family have been kind enough to call or write frequently to ask how I'm feeling and what are the side effects of my treatments and all kinds of thoughtful, compassionate questions. I have to say that I feel like I was prepared for the fatigue and nausea that chemo brings, the physical therapy required after surgery and (I hope, as it's still in the future) the fatigue that comes with radiation.
Although I was told I would lose my hair, however, I don't think I was prepared for the emotional impact. I had not realized how emotionally attached to my hair I was and when it fell out I was devastated. I also probably scarred poor Summer for life since she has had to make this journey with me. She's the one who helped me shop for wigs online; she's the one who shaved my head for me; she's the one who helped me find a good wig in a local store and she's the one who had to feel my head every day to see if I really was getting any hair back. Adam still (after five months) can't look at me if I don't have on a hat or a wig and Mario is not interested in my hair loss since he knows it will grow back. Maybe it takes another woman to feel the impact.
I started panicking about five weeks after chemo when I still did not have one hair anywhere on my head and I started trying to find somewhere that would tell me when I could expect to see hair. There are a lot of YouTube slide shows made by women in my situation but none of them included dates so I decided to begin to document my hair loss and regrowth.
If you're interested, I have created a separate blog (From Dandelion to Rapunzel) for this so you don't have to read about it unless you want to. The link is to the right. (By the way, as I'm sure you know, that is not my picture at the top. I could never bring myself to take a picture of me completely bald. Maybe I'm more like Adam than I know.)
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