A lot of Women Agree, Going Bald is the Worst Part

I am bald.  I am really, really bald.  I am so bald that I don’t recognize myself.  All I see is the face of someone fighting cancer.  I am taken aback when I catch glimpses of myself in the mirror.  “Is that me?”  I think.  Wow.  Surely, this was not in my plans.

But in all my baldness I look for the positive.  I still have some eyebrows, albeit enhanced by make-up, but they are still there.  And I have half of my lashes.  It didn’t help that I got bitten by a mosquito in the corner of my left eye, but you win some, you lose some.  Darn bug!

I am bald because I have just finished my fifth round of chemo.  The fourth kicked my bootie but I was geared up for number five.  My oncologist prescribed a $400. anti-nausea pill that my insurance wouldn’t cover, but lucky for me, his nurse found some samples that I got to try.  The pills sure helped.  They made me feel as if I was fighting instead of dying after my lethal cocktail.

When you are lying around in bed for a few days, being bald does have benefits.  Your hair doesn’t get tangled, it doesn’t make you hot, it doesn’t fall out on the pillow, and it doesn’t have to be brushed, blown-out, flat-ironed or curled when you awaken.  Being bald also makes for quick showering, speedy getting ready time, and easy outfit matching.

But honestly, I hate it.  I realize “hate” is a strong word but I really don’t like being bald.  I don’t like feeling as if I have to cover my head with something whenever I go out.  I want to bare it all, but I just can’t.  People stare.  It takes me off-guard and I suddenly feel odd and off-balance and my emotions well up, reminding me that I am sick. 

I know no one wants to be staring but it’s not very often that you see a bald woman.  I realize people can’t help themselves.  It’s different, peculiar.   

Honestly, I wish people would just ask me if I was going through chemo so I wouldn’t feel like a circus freak.  It would make it so much easier.  It could open up a dialogue for us.  One day, after standing in a very long line at a mega-store, the clerk looked at me and said, “You okay?”  I replied “Yes?” – not sure if this was a line she used on all of the customers.  “Going through chemo?” she then asked with concern.  I was floored.  She was the first person to ask me in public.  “Yeah, I sure am.” Then, everyone in the long line behind me, wished me good luck as I left.  That was so much nicer than the many other cashiers who glance four times at me and then my I.D. picture when I try to buy something with a credit card.

Get a wig, right?  Insurance even pays for it!  I tried to get a wig and I just couldn’t buy it.  I really tried.  But I felt like an imposter, a mannequin of myself.  I couldn’t do it. 

Before I started chemo, almost everyone I met who had been through it warned me to “shave your head before it falls out.”  I couldn’t imagine shaving my head.  It took my breath away just thinking about it. Maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t happen to me, I thought.  But it did.  And it fell out in huge clumps despite my desperate pleas. 

A lot of the women have mentioned that losing their hair was the hardest part of this cancer battle journey.  I didn’t understand it then, but after a few months of life without hair, I totally get it now.  Hair on my head was such a part of my identity.  It was a part of who I was.  I had brown, curly hair. 

Now I feel naked.  I feel vulnerable.  I feel lost.  I feel…bald.