If I Just Breathe

Chapter 4

I hung my head over the bathroom sink and gently raked my fingers through my hair from the nape of my neck to my forehead. Pieces of hair fell into the bowl as silent as snow.

“It’s coming out,” I called to Joe, who was watching a baseball game in the living room.

“No it’s not.”

“It is. Come look.” He came into the bathroom and saw a mound of light brown hair in the sink bowl. He inspected my head and stuck his finger onto a bald spot the size of a quarter above my right ear. His finger was cold and strange on my bare scalp.

Just the week before, I had a mass of long, curly hair, enough for two women. I’ve always disliked the unruly curls that never looked good, no matter what length or color. My hair just always looked messy, not elegant and sleek like the straight hair of the models that fill fashion magazines. Many times while trying unsuccessfully to get my hair to do what I wanted it to do, I’d think in frustration, “One day I’m going to shave it all off,” not knowing that one day I actually would.

My doctor said it would be more traumatic to lose long hair and recommended I get a short haircut. She said it would start falling out about fourteen days after the first round of chemotherapy. It may sound strange, but at that time I was excited for it to begin falling out. It meant the poison was working. I was also curious to see how I would look without hair; how I would feel. Would I have a nicely shaped head? Was some strange Mikhail Gorbechev-like birthmark hidden beneath my hair?

 “Honey, I need help. I want to shave it tonight.” We had talked about this before my first chemotherapy treatment - that I would get a short cut, then shave the rest of my hair off when it started coming out on its own. Not only was the falling hair a mess on my pillow and in the shower, but taking it off myself was one way I could take some control of the situation.

Joe plugged the clippers into the power outlet and turned them on. The initial sound was startling, and as he moved them closer to my head, I moved away.

“I can’t do this,” he said, and turned the clippers off, setting them on the bathroom sink.

“Joe, you have to help me. I won’t be able to do the back of my head by myself.” With trepidation, he retrieved the clippers and turned them back on. I closed my eyes and hung my head back over the sink.

When he was finished, I looked up to see a different person in the mirror looking back at me. He had shaved it without a guard; all that was left was stubble. My head was surprisingly nice and round, and I did not have any birthmarks or forgotten-about scars. My scalp was white where it had previously been covered with hair. My eyes looked big with dark circles underneath. Now I looked like a cancer patient. I cried as I made a loose ball out of the pile of hair left in the sink. The tears blurred my vision so that the hair looked like some small, furry animal.

I had read about a woman who took the hair she had shaved off and placed it on her driveway. She watched from a window inside the house as birds flew away with pieces of it. She imagined her hair being used in nests, to make shelter for new life. Looking back, I wish I had done something like that, something ceremonial. Instead, I placed the ball of hair in my bathroom wastebasket and went to bed.

I awoke to a new fear: making it to the office without hair. People in this situation might dread facing their co-workers, but I was more afraid of the hundreds of stares I knew were waiting for me from the many strangers I would encounter during a typical commute.

I lived in the suburbs of Chicago, but my job was in the city. I lived within walking distance of the train station, and once aboard, it was about a 40-minute ride to Chicago. From there, I could walk to my office if the weather was nice. If not, I could take a city bus. 

“Good luck, honey,” Joe said and pulled me close for a goodbye kiss. I pushed my hat, carefully chosen because it coordinated with my outfit, onto my head and headed for the train station. I used the half-mile walk to build up my courage, thinking I can do this, and Maybe they won’t even notice I am bald. I took deep breaths as I approached the station and the crowd of over 100 commuters lined up along the tracks.

I’ve often compared the walk from the station down the train platform to where the front cars stop, where I preferred to sit, to a fashion runway. People stand along the sidewalk parallel to the train tracks as commuters in their smart business wear walk confidently toward the area that corresponded to the train car where they preferred to sit. I walked past the mass of people, staring straight ahead and trying to mask the terror I was feeling inside. I wondered if people noticed my overnight transformation. 

A few days prior I bought a wig, thinking I would wear it every day to conceal my bald head. With the help of two sweet older women who were “used to this sort of thing,” I chose a wig that had straight, light brown hair. I thought it was a nice, neutral look, nothing too extreme. It looked realistic and even had subtle highlights. I took it to my stylist who trimmed it so that it would look a little more natural. The morning after I had shaved my head, I tried the wig on, and just couldn’t go through with wearing it in public. I felt like an imposter, like I was in some kind of disguise, trying to be someone else.

I decided to wear hats. Because it was chilly outside I thought I could easily slip by unnoticed. I could tell that people still noticed that something was missing. Once on the train, I would promptly bury my head in a book, but when I looked up, I would see people glancing my way. After I lost my eyebrows and eyelashes, it became even more difficult to hide the fact that I was undergoing cancer treatments. One of the worst things about having cancer and undergoing chemotherapy is not the hair loss itself, but that once it is gone, you can’t hide your illness from anyone. You can walk past a group of people with any number of embarrassing or traumatic events in their lives; maybe one is an alcoholic, maybe another just lost their job. Another may be going through a divorce or the death of a loved one. But you can’t tell just by looking at them. With cancer, any stranger on the street can look at you and know what is going on medically whether you want them to or not. I felt so raw and exposed. Angry that I didn’t have the option of privacy.

I made it through that first commute without hair by blocking out my thoughts with music, my ipod drowning out the nervous chatter in my head. I played one song in particular, Breathe, by Michelle Branch over and over that day, and loud.
            

If I just breathe
Let it fill the space between
Everything is all right
Breathe – every little piece of me, you’ll see 
Everything is all right
If I just breathe

This song reminded me to do just what it said – breathe, everything is all right. When I saw the stares – breathe. When a strong gust of wind almost blew my hat off – breathe. When I thought about how drastically my life had changed in such a short space of time – just breathe, everything is all right.

I sometimes joked to others about the benefits of hair loss, like being able to sleep 20 minutes longer in the morning because I didn’t have to wash, blow dry, or style my hair, or not having to shave my legs. But the hair loss was truly one of the most painful parts of my whole cancer experience.

Navigating the world without hair is a lesson in humility. Any confidence I had pre-chemotherapy was gone. During the six months of baldness, I declined social invitations and even passed on an all-expenses paid cruise that Joe’s parents offered us. I was sick of being the only person around wearing a hat – indoors. It was difficult to discover that so much of my self-esteem was wrapped up in my appearance.

I learned I was not alone. While sitting in the waiting room of my oncologist’s office, I read an article about the effect of hair on self-esteem and learned that bad hair, or at least the thought of bad hair, leads to lower self-esteem. People feel less smart, less capable, more embarrassed and more self-conscious. Since I did not have the luxury of staying home during my cancer treatments, these were feelings I was familiar with every day. I remember turning down a speaking engagement at work because I just couldn’t imagine being taken seriously looking as I did.

Luckily, when chemotherapy is over, the hair always grows back, and I was no exception. About six weeks after my last treatment, I reached up to feel stubble on my previously smooth head. Family and friends commented that it was coming back quickly, but to me the regrowth was painfully slow when all I wanted was to feel normal again. I took B-complex vitamins religiously because I had read they stimulated hair growth (I’ll never know if this really worked). When it was about an inch long, I ditched the hats, colored it blonde, and hoped people would think I was extremely cool and hip, not a recovering cancer patient. 

Now, my hair looks much like it did before cancer. It is still curly and unruly, and I have more grey than before, but I’m happy to have it. No one who looks at me today would suspect I had a cancer experience in my past, and I am grateful to be able to keep that part of my life from strangers or others who I wish not to tell.

Hair is a symbol of youth and an expression of beauty and personal style. While losing it was one of the worst parts of my cancer experiences, it was a blessing in disguise because I learned a lot about myself, the way I look at myself, and the way I look at other people who are going through difficult times.  I felt the kindness of my friends and family, who threw a “Hat Party” for me; each attendee brought me a hat as a gift and wore a hat themselves. I felt the love of my husband, who rubbed my bald head every night while we watched TV. I felt the camaraderie of a community of cancer patients who gave me knowing smiles in the cancer center waiting room, my bald head a membership card to a club I eventually became proud to be part of.

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