Oh do not think this photo of corn field stubble resembles the top of my head! The top of my head is a finer texture, and shorter by far. It’s been 50 days since my last chemo, not quite two months. I’ve watched the “hair regrowth after chemo” videos—cute young women smilingly displaying each month’s growth. "You can generally expect to regrow an inch of hair about two months after you stop treatment, followed by a full head of hair within six months to a year," says one site. Nonsense. I think the variation has to do with the length and duration of chemo and radiation. Mine was long. And, too, the kind of chemicals. I read there’s one that can cause permanent hair loss (not the one I had). And my age. Hair is thicker and more abundant when you’re young.
I admit, I’m obsessed with this, especially now that I can hope to be Normal Again. Every morning I study what’s in the mirror to see if I can tell the difference from the day before. The pale strands are all wacky, some barely showing above the skin, some sticking up and turned every which way. My friend Judith says it’s like a dandelion gone to seed. Or, I’d say it’s like a symphony tuning up, each instrument testing itself randomly, by itself, not at all playing in concert yet. You wouldn’t want to listen to that for more than a minute.
There was a woman in her late 80s getting her chemo at the same time I did. She had long white hair, quite elegant. I thought her hair would never fall out. But then great clumps were missing, more each time I saw her. Why did she not cut it off? I thought maybe at her age, her hair had been long for so many years she couldn’t bear the cutting. Or, she was too old to notice how much was gone. She wound what was left around her head until it was a lost cause. The last time I saw her, she was wearing a knit beanie, but then switched, laughing, to a short, curly blonde wig when she left the office.
What strikes me is how we all smile at the camera, smile at whoever’s looking, as if we’re too self-confident to let a little thing like hair loss slow us down. It does help, I admit, to project that face. As one woman on one website said—she’d lost a lot of hair permanently—“If this is the price for not dying of cancer, then okay.”
I’m struck by the ferocity of the body and mind as it turns toward wellness. During all that awful (I will say that now) treatment, there’s a hunkering down, an enduring. But then comes a dramatically strong impetus toward wellness, the mind and body fighting their way back. I didn’t want to use the metaphor of “fighting,” as in “fighting this cancer.” But NOW it feels absolutely right. I can feel every hurt, damaged cell flexing its little muscles. I am flexing my muscles. Something in me is more aggressive than previously. I wouldn’t call it anger—at least it doesn’t feel that way. Just insistent, assertive.
This is a field of thistles in bloom, across the road from our cottage. I can now walk two miles without tiring too much. If I do that, I don’t feel like swimming, too. One or the other. Yesterday I walked the two miles and Jerry and I went for a canoe ride after supper. The water was beautiful and I wanted to swim, but I was done for the day.
I haven’t mentioned my new book of poems, not much anyway. It’s not out until October, but I got 25 advance copies last week. It’s really pretty, and I do think it’s my best so far. I like thinking that. I wonder if the next one will be as good, if my brain’s had too much chemo to think straight. The poems I’m writing now, many of them, feel as if they suffer from not enough concentrated time. But I’m not sure. They seem to be simpler. I seem to be “trying” less. What does that mean? I am always stumbling in the dark with this work, anyhow.
My daughter and her family were here when the books arrived. So I got to give each of the grandchildren a book and read a few poems to them in front of the fireplace. The book has a series called “The Grandmother Sonnets,” one about each of our ten grandchildren. Those took some explaining, since they’re “adult” poems. They said it helped to hear them from me. People who aren’t poetry readers do so much better when they hear them read. Well, we all do. But Abby buried her head in her mother’s lap and said it was too much like being in school. Sorry, Abby.
To make up for the poetry “lesson,” here’s a photo of Abby in her dance costume. 