Taking Control

There’s a chain of events that occurs when you get the phone call that changes your life. Things start to move 100 miles per hour. You’re being pulled in a million different directions and spending your days having doctor after doctor map out your future. You can ask questions, get second opinions and pretend like you get a say so in how your cancer will be treated. But ultimately, the decision isn’t yours. It’s do what the doctors say, or risk your life. At the age of 32, with a one year old baby boy, I can’t afford to play Russian Roulette. So how do I take control of my journey? How do I feel like I have some say so in what my future holds? Someone on the outside looking in could easily say that I could take control by maintaining a positive attitude. And trust me, I’ve heard that once or twice. Those people aren’t completely wrong. A positive attitude is important but at this stage of the game even my control of that is beginning to fade. This is where my husband has stopped listening because I’m getting ready to blame it on the abominable snowman or Bigfoot of a woman’s anatomy... hormones.  You know that thing that us women “make up” as an excuse to be a royal pain in the ass?  Well those little make believe excuses have decided to part ways with my body sending me straight into medically induced menopause. Take the crazy mood swings that comes along with that, and mix it with the massive amounts of hormones that I pumped my body full of for the egg retrieval prior to treatment and basically my body doesn’t even know what is going on. Needless to say, my emotions are getting harder to control. I am okay one minute and then the very next, over nothing I will have a full fledge melt down faster than Snookie spirals down the alcohol hole on Jersey Shore.  Zero control. 

As if there wasn’t enough going on with my body being taken over as if I am a host to some foreign alien from another planet, let’s add in hair loss. This may seem silly to some, and a lot of people will not understand why I am getting ready to make this such a big deal. However, for me it is one of the hardest things to cope with during all of this. As a woman, my hair is a huge part of my identity. I pick my outfit for the day, based on if my hair is curly or straight. I wear it down to hide flaws and imperfections on my face. I wear it up when I get a little extra time to sculpt and contour, and am feeling myself a little more than usual. Friends refer to me as “Red” rather than my name because of the warm BBQ sauce color that is my hair. When I was told I would lose it soon after my first treatment, I had an overwhelming fear that people wouldn’t recognize me. A fear that my son wouldn’t know me from Adam. Sure there are wigs and scarves and ways to hide my bald head when it happens but that doesn’t make it any easier. I felt like my identity was going to be ripped away from me and all I could do was sit back and wait for it to happen. 

I was prepped by my nurses and doctor that hairloss would happen within 6-10 days following my first treatment. I knew that I mentally could not handle waking up one morning with a chunk of hair on my pillow, or washing my hair and having the drain clog up, more than usual , as it all just came washing away with the water and soap suds. I took this information and tried to look at it from a different perspective. For those who know me, you know changing my outlook was no easy task. Change and I don’t get along and I have a tendency to obsess over the smallest of things. All of these tendencies are prior to the hormone imbalance, so yea... I’m even crazier now. So I decided that this is the one time in all of this that I have a say so. A moment that I can take control and take my hair before Chemotherapy takes it. But there was a small part of me that thought...What if I am that one rare case where I can sit through Chemotherapy, and never lose my hair? What if my hair is so thick that it will just fall out here and there and no one will ever even notice that it’s thinning? What if I never lose it, and I shaved it for nothing?! So many what if’s that I was again, obsessing over. Making it impossible to take action and cut my hair. So I waited. I held on to my hair, my identity, a little longer. Day 10 came and went and I slowly started to convince myself into sincerely thinking that I would be able to keep my hair. (Anyone else feel like they should be playing a drinking game for everytime I say “hair”?!) 6-10 days, they said. And it was the later of the two. I was in the clear!  I stood in front of the mirror like Marcia Brady, brushing my hair with a hundred strokes, absorbing the feeling and admiring how well it was holding up.

 My hair-1 : Chemotherapy-0 

{Insert scary horror movie music: duh duh duuhhh.} Turns out my hair is just as stubborn as me and just needed a little more time. Day 13 and I will never forget the way it felt when my heart sank into my stomach as I looked down in the sink and saw what would be considered a supersized large amount of red hair. It was bound to happen. It was the nature of the beast. Yet as much as I prepared myself for that moment, there was ultimately nothing that could have prepared me for that moment. I cried for what felt like hours but was probably more like days. It’s like the moment where you break up with a guy. You’re devastated but still have a little glimmer of hope that you will get back together, and then see on Facebook that he’s in a new relationship. All hope lost. 

So I took control in the only way I could and decided to cut my long hair. I had spent so much time growing my hair out, and just like that, it was gone. Deciding to do a transition cut was one of the better ideas I’ve had during all of this. The idea of going from long to bald made me want to run and hide and never come out. But being able to transition into the state of baldness would help make it a little easier. I thought. 

It was a cute haircut. But it wasn’t me. I was embarrassed to go anywhere and when I did I felt like people looked at me different. It was probably all in my head but regardless, the feeling of being judged was still there.  Good gracious, it’s just hair!! I’ve said it over and over to myself hoping it would help. I apologized to my husband Tyler on more than 10 occasions for not looking like the girl he married. Our son, Raylan became super fussy right after it was cut and I convinced myself that he didn’t know who I was and didn’t want anything to do with me. Now you all are saying, “Good gracious!! It’s just hair!” But it was so much more. It represented me.  I was fading into this person that I just didn’t recognize anymore.  

Three days later I was mourning the loss of my hair on a grander level. My scalp became so sensitive that even laying on my pillow at night was semi painful. I’ve never had lice, but the thought of a hundred little bugs having recess on my head is exactly what it felt like. It itched all day long and every time I would touch it, 25 or more strands would fall out.  All I could think of was the 90s cartoon Rugrats and that ratchet little Cynthia doll. It was uncanny how similar we were looking. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what I am talking about, please let me share with you. Yep. Identical twins is what we were.  After I arose from my 5th biopsy with a million little hairs on my pillow, apologizing to the nurse for the amount of clean up she had in store, I recognized that it was time. Time for the brave shave. I can’t really say that I was brave. In all actuality I was the opposite. But it had to be done. So that Tuesday, after an 8 hour treatment, and a pile of hair on the floor beside the bed, I took control. 

Arriving at the salon I was so tired from my treatment that I almost didn’t think about why I was there. I had my best friend with me and my mom for support and my aunt was kind enough to squeeze me in last minute. I sat in the chair scared about what was getting ready to happen. With tears in the eyes of everyone who surrounded me, my Aunt Jill took the blade to my head and with a deep breath, hair began to fall. There were a lot of tears. A lot of emotions. And a lot of scary thoughts. But that didn’t stop us from having a little fun with it before it was all gone. I think I could seriously get away with a Mohawk. I was ready to rock out the rest of this cut.  A lot more tears later and it was done. Along with my hair being gone, so were my emotions. There was this distant sadness that I felt. Along with a detachment. It was as if I couldn’t find any feelings, I couldn’t connect with what just happened because I was unable to recognize myself. As I write this I have spent my first full day being hairless. There have still been zero emotions. I’m not relieved. I’m not sad. I literally feel nothing in regards to losing my hair and honestly that is slightly more scary than having the mental breakdown that I thought I was going to have. I’m completely unable to connect with myself when I look in the mirror. So did I really take control? Or did I just send myself into another tizzy trying to take control? The answer is still uncertain to me. But I do know that I will not let this deminish my spirits. After all, it’s just hair, right? (Anyone alittle over served from our game yet?!) 

So whatever stage of grief I am in, it’s the stage where I’m going to take a huge step and share with the world. As my husband put it, I’m going to wear my bald head as a badge of honor for the battle that I am enduring. And I’m going to be proud in this moment. Because I am one fierce fighter. And this is just a little price to pay for my life. Besides, less is more, right? Here is my ode to Brittany Spears circa 2007.

{{I should also put in small print that I will be rocking wigs and scarves a lot. So as brave as this may seem, it may be one of the only times you see it. Bravery in small steps.}}