The time has come: NO more WIGS!

It's been a week and a half since my last post so I figured it was time for an update.

First things first, WOW my hair is growing so fast.

Check this out: 

It's coming in super thick and super blonde! I'm so excited. I went to a big ole FoCo festival with the kiddo this weekend and I went wig-less. I actually haven't been wearing a wig at all this weekend. It's so freeing to not have it on. And talk about way more comfortable. Maybe it's time to say goodbye to the wigs!

It's a struggle because I can't deny that I feel different without my long hair. It's been more of a hardship since I hit remission. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe because my life is slowly going back to normal and this lack of hair is a constant reminder of what I suffered through this spring? 

It's hard to say but I'm sure that's part of it. Now that I feel normal, I want to LOOK normal too. No wigs. No facades at work. It's been a pain in the ass trying to remember what wig I wore to teach in or to my classes. Most of my fellow instructors know so at least that barrier is down but I've kept it to myself otherwise. I think I'll just show up and tell my students I had a bad hair day and got rid of all my hair. Or I rolled around in gum. Or just don't say anything at all. We make a lot of jokes in the classroom so maybe I'll just make a joke of it and that's that. "You'd never guess how crazy my Labor Day weekend was!" Or something. Either way, no more wigs starting officially tomorrow!

It's not like when I was sick that I was happy about being an albino hairless woman (my own analogy for how I felt) but it didn't bother me to the extent it did once I was better. I've found myself, not even joking, staring longingly at old pictures of my hair.

Oh, my hair. How I loved thee. So long and wonderful. It was like a shampoo commercial. 

Talk about identity problems. Way back before I lost my hair, I made an uplifting post about taking back my power by making the initial cut myself. And I did. And it was great. I still mean every word of it.  

And let's get real. I had far more important things to worry about then. Fighting cancer. Suffering from chemo. Parenting with a tumor. (Sounds like a bad self help book) And so on.

Not that I don't have important things going on now. I do. And they're huge. Teaching for the first time (which is going great and I love it,) graduate courses, moving to a new state, unpacking, and everything else. It'd just be nice to have my hair along for the ride.

But it is back, just not what it was before. It's growing super fast. I have the beginnings of a cute pixie cute. Every day it's looking more normal. I look kinda hardcore actually which is so not me but hey, I'll roll with it. I mean check this out- this is the hair exactly 14 weeks post chemotherapy:

Notice that my eyebrows and my eyelashes are completely back to normal. My eyelashes are even more full than they were before which is neat. So starting tomorrow, I'm not wearing wigs anymore. I'm sick of dealing with them and it's time to finally feel back to normal. Even if my hair doesn't look the same it's still MY hair. I'll rock the pixie cut and be proud of it.

Other than hair, recovery is getting there one step at a time. The neuropathy sucks the most and gives me the most trouble. The mornings are the hardest with the neuropathy and the fatigue. I have an appointment with the Survivorship Clinic next Tuesday that they say will help. I'm not even sure what they're going to do- some physical therapy, seeing different doctors, etc. I still have tons of pain and tenderness in the scar where my port was- they might be able to help with that too. The scar is so big and ugly- I honestly wouldn't mind it though if it didn't ache and sting all the time. So strange. 

On a far less optimistic note, I think I'm suffering from cancer survivor P.T.S.D. I already had a feeling that this was the case since my final PET scan made me feel utterly panicked but my last doctor's appointment totally reinforced that. The nurse was just taking my blood pressure and it totally freaked.me.out. Like I wanted to rip my arm out of the cuff and jump out of the window. Kind of like a Looney Tune. All it reminded me of was that one night I spent in the hospital from neutropenic fever when my blood pressure kept dropping, dropping, dropping... And they almost put me on the side of the hospital, as I so eloquently put it, where they send people to die.

(That's seriously not really the case but you know my bad sense of humor has to work its way in. I really don't think they send people there to die.. haha)

That night they (my awesome nurse, Megan specifically) took my blood pressure every 30-60 minutes (something like that, it's a blur now) and pumped me full of fluids. I remember the next day my face was so puffy that I didn't even recognize myself. That was the lowest point of the entire stretch of chemotherapy. The lowest point- I don't think there was anything much worse than those few days in the hospital. That night was one of the most scariest moments for me. 

And all it took to bring me back to that place was just having my blood pressure taken?

Wooooah, buddy. Good thing I don't have to go to the doctor often. Nice lady I talked to at the clinic told me the first year is the hardest. I'm seeing that is the case. I hope over time little things like having my blood pressure taken won't give me the shivers like it does now.

Time, time, time.

Like any traumatic event you just have to make peace with it. To distract yourself, talk about it, meet others with the same worries, whatever it takes. I'm not sure what I need to do yet to heal. Do I need to talk about it? Do I need to just try to forget about it?

Each day I want something different. I think for now, writing about it is the best medicine for me.

My goal for winter break is to start turning this blog into a book. I can't think of a better way to take this traumatic life event and make it into something positive.