57. Decision time

I can’t decide if I’ve been deliberately perverse/defiant, if I really don’t care or what. Knowing me, deliberately perverse is more likely. The fact is, I have felt completely comfortable with my buzzcut but I can’t deny the fact that it’s getting sparser. I’m completely at ease when I’m out. On hospital days, I’m quite happy to be seen au naturel - though I did notice last week that a few other patients looked at me surreptitiously. Maybe they were speculating on whether it was growing back or on its way out; maybe they were thinking I’d be better off with a wig?

However, it registered with me today that what I catch sight of in the bathroom mirror several times a day is a reminder that I am/have been ill: a pale, wan face with a halo of colourless fluff, thinning eyebrows (thank heavens for the spider legs - they seem indestructible) and depleted eyelashes (sob). I wonder if that’s an image that’s beginning to define me. I certainly don’t want that.

So my decision to NOT allow chemotherapy to determine my self image is beginning perhaps to backfire. I need to decide if I hang on out of sheer cussedness to my original decision or take the pragmatic approach, practise wearing my wig and face the world with no external evidence of illness beyond the pallor.

Flicking back through my phone (I stress I do not take selfies out of vanity but to send to someone else), I have a short history of my hair, from last summer, to diagnosis, surgery and chemo:

   

High maintenance to lower, without the annoying hair around my face

Prepared for practicalities straight after surgery and the inevitable effects of chemotherapy

 

Me on a bad day       Me in my wig

Ignoring the fact that I look like Andy Warhol, I have to admit it’s a much more realistic wig than most I see around the oncology unit and I do look healthier. I suspect that could provide a psychological boost in some ways. I’m disappointed that it’s proving so important. All this angst over a public image!