Monday, October 6, 2008

Checkin' myself

Good grief, I am just horrible at this blog stuff. I come and read my own blog, while at work. and think to myself "when the hell is this gonna get updated."
And have soooooo much to say. and yet forget to sign in and say it.
pppfff...

So anywho. You ever have that wierd moment when you catch yourself doing something completely trivial and mundane but you have a flash from a previous moment in your life when that very mundane task was much much more laborious of a chore?
Am I just being way to blatantly obvious here?

Every now and then I have those odd moments. For instance today, I walked out to the kitchen from my room to grab a handful of chips and stopped in mid-stride as a memory of a few years back, home recovering from surgery, and doing that very same thing (walking out to grab a snack) was a major chore. Shuffling along with my skeletal 102 lb frame swimming in sweats, fuzzy slippers, and ginormous hoodie. Hair unwashed for three or four days straight and sticking out every which way. It took a good 5 minutes to walk out, get something and make it back to my room and in bed. By which time I was exhausted.

So today when I had that brief flashback I just paused and soaked in that memory. Let it bubble up, feel the emotions from that time, acknowledge how far I've come, and then continued on. I don't want to begin to take the everyday little things for granted.

Aight, enough with that. Lemme give you guys some updates. Some of you may have seen my new do', but I should officially unveil it for all of cyberland to critique. I've been doing chemo infusions every two weeks since may, but I started with the full regime of FOLFIRI, Avastin, and Erbitux. After four cycles I was switched to just taking Erbitux while I awaited surgery. So I've been doing that since..oh, i dunno, before August. The odd thing was that about a month or so after being taken off the big cocktail of drugs, I started noticing my hair just shedding ridiculously. I thought it was the residuals of the former drugs working themselves out of my system. But it just kept coming out. My hair was limp, thinned, and lifeless. It's not a very common side effect of Erbitux. So I don't understand why after not comign out with the multitude of chemo drugs, it was doing so now.
I started by cutting it pretty short. (depicted here by the "many faces of me" heh) Which actually wasn't all that bad. But I wanted to kick it up a bit. and added in hot pink and red highlightsBut you know...it just kept coming out. I was haunted by little hairs. Everywhere. Hanging off of everything. If i leaned forward and shook my head back and forth little hairs would rain down. Just practically leaping off my head.
So I knew the inevitable was coming. *gulp*. I was going to have to baldly go...where few women ever have to go.
And so after a few glasses of wine for lubrication, out came the clippers and off came the hair!












(oh how the wine helped.....)


















But you know...I figured I should try something I wouldn't normally have ever tried (well, um besides the very obvious SHAVED HEAD). So, for the meantime, I have a little bang and side burns. Which makes wearing a hat kinda like a little illusion:















So for now, I'm getting used to the (really really cold) breeze on my scalp, not having to wash or brush my hair really at all, and getting wierd looks from little kids. It's not all that bad. Not my choice. But it's a little fun playing the role of a little emo/punk/skinheadish/lesbian girl. Why not, life is short, play roles.

7 comments:

  1. I think your new haircut is totally hot. You can pull off short hair extremely well; you look like of COURSE you would have that haircut, because you can work it and it suits you. I can't imagine having your hair fall out all over the place is much fun, but as an instigator to go for a sweet supershort haircut I think it (almost) did you a favor.

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  2. You look fabulous my friend!


    Miss you!

    XO

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  3. How cool you look! You always manage to go with the flow and deal with whatever comes your way! Way to go!! You inspire me! Sue

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  4. Each day, when the sun is warm on my face, I soak in that sunny glow and savor it. Chemo made me so cold all the damn time. I am still peripherally nueropathetic (it's really neuropathic, but the new word sounds better to me), and that means the tinglies in the feet and fingers to jangle me back to the reality of survivor-dom... Those memories serve me well though - nothing for granted for me anymore.

    And the hairdo is nothing - your being shines through everywhere. Keep up the great attitude!

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  5. Hey Becca, you're looking absolutely gorgeous with the new hairdo! Seriously, I love girls with supershort hair and it looks fantastic on you :)

    By the way, it's been too long... send me an email will you? ;)

    Love/hugs, from the Lowlands

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  6. In that first quartet of photos I'm assuming the upper right one was taken when you were about 10 since you look soooooo young.

    I love that you saved the little red and hot pink worms! They look very cute sitting there waiting to be taken home.

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  7. Hi Becca--I took the test to see if ebitux would work for me and it came back that it will not. Dr. put me on 5-FU instead, what do you think?? Sue

    cancersucksbigtime.com

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