My hair has been long for my whole life. Not only did I like the way long hair looked, but I also just didn’t know how to do it any other way. At the onset of my teen years, my hair became my security blanket. Of my physical attributes, I found that people most complimented my hair. They talked about the length, the color, the thickness…I clung to that. I vividly remember my stubborn teenage resolve about losing my hair in the face of cancer. In my head, I always told myself that I would rather die than go bald from chemo. I was also pretty confident that I would never be faced with that choice, though, because i was never going to get cancer. Little did I know that there were other plans.
I fully admit that this rationale was both dramatic and ridiculous. Nevertheless, it is how I felt then. To some extent, the realization brought about by my lymphoma diagnosis that I was going to lose my hair, still felt like a hopeless fate at that point.
My first cycle of chemo started when I was still inpatient in the hospital. I knew that I only had a week or two left before my hair started falling out in clumps. I decided to get ahead of that trauma and just shave it off. My best friends, Janet, Haley and Lauryn, came to my house one day to help with the process.
Preparing my own hair for a wig
We methodically sectioned my long hair into little individually banded pig tails. There were probably about 30 of them. Shaving those clumps of hair off made my heart hurt. I definitely cried at one point.
Yet, at the exact same time, it gave me such strength and made me feel like things were back on my terms for the time being. I wasn’t sitting back and just letting my hair fall out. In fact, we took those individually sectioned clumps of hair and sent them away to be made into a custom wig.
My stepmom gave me the name of a company that will take your own hair and craft it into a wig. It took about 4 months to complete, and it was worth the wait. The company’s name is Compassionate Creations Wig Design. As the name would suggest, Veronica and Gisele were so wonderful. They stayed in touch throughout the process. My final product was beautiful. They used some donor hair to supplement all that I had sent them. When the wig arrived, I took it to my stylist so that she could trim it up and make it even.
While the wig was shorter than that to which I was accustomed, it was so comforting to have my own hair back on my head. When I put on that wig, I didn’t feel like a cancer patient. I had a break for a moment. I blended in.
Bald truly IS beautiful – Who needs hair?
When I was bald and also lost my brows and lashes, there was a SIGNIFICANT sense of freedom there. I felt so free and empowered. I felt beautiful and strong. I’m sure that I have never been so confident or proud. I’d have never expected such a positive response to losing my hair. This is just another example of the fact that we can never accurately predict what we would do in a specific scenario because we simply don’t know what we don’t know. Successfully chartering unknown waters is such an incredible opportunity to grow and evolve.
I heard a sad story a couple of weeks ago. A friend of mine told me that he and his wife had just lost a close friend to cancer. When the friend heard her diagnosis, he said, she didn’t want to pursue the chemo required to treat her cancer. Apparently, she just didn’t want to lose her hair. We all approach our journeys differently. Hers was right for her. It just makes me so sad that she didn’t give herself a chance to recognize the resiliency you develop in a situation such as ours.
My hair is growing back now and every stage is a learning experience. I am constantly learning new ways to style my short hair and it’s an ever changing landscape. While I would never wish my big-picture cancer experience on anyone, I wish that I was able to share the significance of overcoming life-altering obstacles. I lost my hair but not my self esteem. I would do it all over again to ensure that I kept this opportunity to realize what’s truly important and what isn’t…(more on that soon!)
