Be Careful What You Wish For

To hell with anticipation.

It's funny how when you wish for something, you think you really want it to happen - but when it does, it hits you like a stack of bricks...

I was quoted last week saying "if my hair is going to fall out, I wish it would just go ahead and come out so I don't have to wonder when or how much..." Ahhh if only I could turn back the hands of time.

Let me start from the beginning - rewind to treatment last Tuesday: B and I are sitting at the clinic and I ran my hands through my then long and flowing hair and my fingers came back with a few stray hairs - nothing unusual right? WRONG. This was only the beginning. Wednesday rolls around and after two days of abusing the ponytail, it was time to wash, dry and style my hair that I have patiently grown after donating 13 inches to Locks of Love. A few brush-fulls and a bit of anxiety later, this exercise in usual grooming proved to be a bit more stressful.  It was official - the damn red drug, Adriamycin, had done its job, I was indeed losing my hair far quicker than anyone had expected.

In efforts to control this situation, I immediately called my hairdresser to cut my hair short thinking that shortening the length would all of a sudden thwart Project Fallout. All day Thursday I kept having to remind myself that the presence or length of my hair didn't define me, but I kept finding myself in this awkward mental position that I was allowing myself to feel crappy about something that, in the grand scheme of things, is so small. Come 10 a.m. Friday morning, I was sitting at my salon saying farewell to seven or more inches and walked out with a super cute bob.

Fast forward 30 hours and I experienced likely the most traumatic shower of my entire life as I was confronted with massive hair loss and as you girls can imagine - lots and lots of tears. After attempting to style my once-cute bob, I decided that B and I would spend our Saturday night shaving my head and drinking lots of champagne.

Now after all the emotion of losing my hair, it was time for a little fun - enter: B's Salon of Style and a $15.99 set of ConAir clippers. We turned on the Sinatra, drank quite a few glasses of champagne and went through a variety of really classy haircuts like a hackneyed layering job, a mullet, a partial fade and two different lengths of a GI Jane-style buzz.

We settled on the buzz cut that continues to shed but, hey, looking on the bright side, if the drugs are wreaking this kind of havoc on my hair, I shutter to think what it's doing to the tumor. Below you will find a few pictures for your viewing pleasure.

xoxo

T