Friday, February 20, 2015

More about the hair


Sooo, I shaved my head. And it's been pretty great so far. But let me back up.

The doctor said that my hair would start falling out after about 2–3 weeks. OK cool. About 2.5 weeks in I noticed that every time I touched my head, a single hair would fall out. I was finding and removing hairs from my laptop keyboard more and more often. This was enough to signal to me that it was time.

My dear friends Maude and Emma hopped over and helped document this once-in-a-lifetime moment, which was pretty cool. I mean, when in your life does the husband get to shave his wife's head?

We planned out how we wanted to make the gifs (check out the ones Emma made here), and then started shaving! Periodically we stopped the clippers to take photos. So fun. I got to try a bunch of sweet hairstyles as we chop-chopped our way down.









Things are significantly more chilly without a head full of hair, but that's what hats are for. And I'm covered (pun) in that department.

While some of my hair follicles are closing up because of chemo (that's what causes the hair loss), not all of them are kind enough to close up shop. I still have to shave my legs and armpits, although my pubic hair is falling out like crazy (sorry if that's TMI, but it was something that I wondered about before we started chemo). I still think it would be so awesome if chemo only affected your leg hairs...but maybe that's just too dreamy.

Shaving my head is probably the thing I got asked about the most when I would tell someone I had cancer. "Are you worried/anxious/fearful that shaving your head will be hard/scary/make you not feel or look pretty?" And for a lot of men and women this can be a pretty traumatic event. But my friends and husband were so supportive! We made it into a fun event (photoshoot = always fun), and I know that I'm not gonna have a shaved head for the rest of my life. Hair grows back. My body will heal. This is not forever.


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