Deep Thoughts by Beck: Chemoflage.....

I expected that after chemotherapy was finished and no more steroids or cell killing chemicals were being shoved into my body, that I would morph back into the Becky that I was before. I was sure that while away for 6 weeks in St. Louis getting radiation, that my water weight would come off, that as the steroids washed out of my body it would shrink back to its pre-cancer weight, that my hair would grow back by leaps and bounds and I would return home victorious, looking as if nothing had ever even happened.

Months have passed now since any steroids or chemo has dripped into my veins and I will confess here that although my weight gain has plateaued, I have yet to lose a pound. Actually, I’ll take that back. I DID lose ten pounds while in St. Louis – I lost the same five pounds twice. That equals ten. However, I guess it wasn’t very lost because I found it again…….both times.

And my hair....oh my hair. Some days I’ll admit, I realize bald was so much easier. I wanted my hair back so badly when it was gone. Even when my head was smooth as a baby’s butt, I shampooed and conditioned out of respect, so that it would know I was committed to our relationship, anxiously awaiting its return. Now there are times when I look in the mirror and grimace at the girl that stares back at me.

Yes, my hair is growing back. What color is it? I honestly couldn’t tell you. As it began to reappear, it was the shade and texture of a dandelion. The more it grows the darker it gets but the white fuzz of the dandelion still lives at the ends of the strands. This causes the actual color overall to be unidentifiable. Gray sometimes, dark blonde others, brown maybe. My friend, Summer, matched it on a color chart and called it ash.

I just want it to be long and blonde.

The sides and the back are growing well. It’s soft and thick and we pet me like I’m the family dog. Kelley tugs my hair a lot and when I asked him why, his response was “Because I can.”

The top, however, is being cantankerous. It’s taking its time growing back in, falling way behind the progress of the rest of my head, leaving the front (obviously one of the most important parts) thin enough that you can still see my scalp. Maybe I didn’t condition it enough.

And then there are my nails. I have one toenail that has definitely seen better days. All the colors of a moldy rainbow, it threatens to fall off. My thumbnails, although not discolored, easily detach at the ends from the nail bed now. All proof that I probably should have toughed out the ice baths for my hands and feet during chemo, instead of wimping out after the third time.

Yes, things are definitely different now.

My daughter and I spent the day shopping together last weekend. She’s grown so much since last year and the shorts that were just shorts last summer, this summer are Daisy Dukes and every time she wears them another gray hair shows up on her daddy’s head. Every other shopping trip we’ve ever gone on, the excitement for the day only lasted until we got to the store and by the end of the day we no longer liked one another. This time she had opinions. The mother-daughter roles played out well as I would say “How about this?” and she’d say “No.” And this time when she went in the dressing room, she stopped me at the door and said “You don’t have to come in.” But when a zipper on the back of a dress she tried on was out of her reach, she asked for my help. I only partially opened the door and, trying not to invade her space, stepped in with half of my body. And then couldn’t for the life of me figure out who the old lady was in there with her. A sideways glance had caught a glimpse of my own reflection in the mirror. I guess my peripheral vision has no rose colored glasses.

This is the aftermath of the battle that raged within me.

The truth of the matter is that at some point in the game it’s easier to look like a cancer patient when you ARE one. A chemo scarf, a bald head, missing eyebrows, all telltale signs of why you look like you do.

But what do people see now? Do they see the old lady in the dressing room mirror? Do I still have that cancer patient look or do people wonder if I really think my hair looks good the only two ways I can fix it………..thin in the front and spiked in the back, like a Kate Gosselin do gone terribly wrong or just combed, reminiscent of Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby? Do they see me now and remember me from before…and miss that girl?

My feelings about my appearance now are justified. They’re real and I’m allowed to have them. I am not allowed however, to fall prey to them. It would be easy to let it consume me. It would be easy to seclude myself, protecting me from my own vanity. I know it would be easy. Because I’ve been tempted.

Putting it into words has lightened my load somewhat. Sometimes I don’t know I feel it until I write it. The words fall out of my pen, the paper an old friend I can share my secrets with. And when it’s all said and done, the peace comes.

Life can overwhelm you. It throws you curves from time to time. And some things, like cancer, are out of our control. Or how fast our hair grows. But when we are heavy hearted and we can be honest enough to see what is weighing us down, we can make the choice to change what we can and accept what we can’t.

So, it’s time for me to get my big girl panties on and change what ails me. I can’t make my hair grow faster. So I’ll accept that and spike the poo out of it.

I can’t make my funky nail grow out any quicker or force my fingernails to hang on tighter. But I’m a nail technician. Nails are my business. So if anyone could spruce them up so the damage is hidden, that’d be me!

And as for my “fluffier” self, I don’t feel comfortable with the thirty pounds I have gained. I don’t like that I can’t fit into my old clothes and that I don’t like the way I look in new ones. But that IS in my control and that I CAN change.