hair

We women can get so very involved with our hair, can't we?

When I had my brain surgery, they had to do some shaving of the head. They shaved from the temple on my left side, close to the hairline on my forehead, then down behind my ear. That's where they had to cut into my head to take out the big honking tangerine sized mass I was evicting from my skull. Next step, bad ass stitches, leading directly to "oh a cool scar!" which I was able to show people for a while since all the hair had been shorn off. The healthy, no cut apart and resown together skin kept all of it's hair, and that hair continued to grow nicely. The shaved off just to make work room for the surgeon hair started and continued to grow also. Radiation therapy began about a month or so later, and that was 5 days a week for 6 weeks. It was, hmm, halfway through that treatment that I felt my first chunk of hair fall out. I was home alone, Scott was out of town, the boys were sleeping, and I was sitting on the couch by the window, reading quietly. I absentmindedly ran my hand through my hair, and my hand came away with a lock of hair that had very recently been attached to my scalp. I just held it out in front of me, unwary and unsure of what to do with it. I don't think I'll need a visual aid to remember losing that hair. I've got that memory quite well burned into my brain.

By the end of radiation I was pretty much finished with losing hair noticibly (I was almost completely bald on the right side of my face, hairline and nearly 2 inches out from the hairline were sparse. On the left side it was certainly there but not quite as naked and bald. I was amazingly lucky that I got to keep the rest of all that hair (I have quite a lot!), and it was time for scarves and bandanas and headbands. And hats.

As much as I hated even the thought of pictures of myself during the whole ordeal , I look back now and wish that someone hadn't listened to me. Because I couldn't see myself much in the hospital - they finally brought a mirror over so I could catch a glimpse of my swollen, torn-up self in the ICU.

I still, almost a year later, struggle with cameras and pictures. I need to document what I look like through all of these changes. My shorty short hairs are growing in, quickly, and in all different places and layers and even different colors/textures. Aside from my hair, I've also joined WeightWatchers and lost about 30lbs. I've started running. My life is changing, my body is changing, and my mind is changing.

As I was sitting in the bathroom this evening, pondering what to do to fix the wild mess that is the hair framing my face, it struck me how ridiculous I am. I have hair. It's got some issues, but I have hair, healthy beautiful hair. My scar, though it is so very cool to see, is hidden under all that hair.

I don't know why hemangiopericytoma decided it needed to get cozy inside my skull, so very cozy right up on my optic nerve. I don't know how hemangipericytoma works. My doctors do, though, so now that we're almost at the 1-year mark for removal of the tumor it's nearly time for a full body scan to see if that rat bastard tumor sent any friends out to hang on elsewhere inside this rockin hot bod. I see that doc on Friday the 13th and will report back.

It hit me today that things could have gone down an entirely different path. I do not frequently allow myself to walk the "could have been" road, because it opens floodgates of thoughts and feelings I usually do not allow myself to have. So, today, I thought about how thankful I am for all I have and for all that I am. I watched my kids through a different lens today, enjoying them with the understanding that I could have had to miss it all.

Life is a gift. A precious, delicate, smelly, nonsensical gift. Given with no direction or instruction, life begins and then we are cared for until we can more or less take care of ourselves, at which time we lose our minds and make more of ourselves that we then have to learn to care for, and the cycle goes on and on and on....

It's a gift. I have this gift now. For all I know, I will continue to enjoy this gift for many more decades. If, somehow, that changes, I want to know that I embraced my gift and my life.